My skiing experience...

(That's my younger sister, playing in the'snow')







(LESSON TIME!!!!!!)




Ok, I know that this might be a little late, seeing that it happened about a month ago. However, I still remember it very clearly, seeing that it came, amazingly, pretty naturally to me.

It was the second day of my family’s holiday trip to Korea. We had woken up at 6.30 in the morning. After a hearty buffet breakfast at the resort, we went out to the ski rental shop to rent our skiing gear. After getting our equipment, we were introduced to our lady instructor who spoke to us in a mixture of broken English and Korean language. Within minutes, she brought us out to the cold and we found an empty spot big enough for our group of 17.

After what felt like an hour, she told us to fall down, on purpose. This was to see if we could get up on our own in the event we fell down with the cumbersome skis on. I learnt that if you didn't want to try getting up (an arduous task), than don't even fall down!!!

My mother had probably the funniest skiing session of the lot without even getting up the slope, seeing that she could not even get up after the practice fall. Later on, when she finally (with the instructor’s help) got up, my mother set off up the slope. Finally reaching the hundred meter mark, she tried to ski down the slope and failed badly. While attempting to negotiate past a group of skiing students, my mother fell down. Looking to her left she saw this guy fall, after trying to avoid her. Looking to her right she saw this lady fall, also while trying to avoid her.

Still, I feel that my cousin takes the cake for the most dangerous skiing experience. He had two close shaves. Well, it was more of one than two close shaves. Firstly, a snowboarder slammed into him, knocking him off balance. Within moments, he fell to the ground. As he lay there, he suddenly sat up, not a moment too soon. Another snowboarder just whizzed past where his head was moments before. Luckily for him, he wasn’t decapitated…

However, other than my two failed attempts at getting up after falling on purpose, I had a relatively perfect day. On the five trips I made up the slope by walking, I did not fall down at all, skiing or otherwise. To quote another person on our tour group, “The skiing down part is exhilarating, but the climb up is damn tiring!!!” The instructor did not teach us how to turn, but I, without any prior training, turned quite effortlessly! (Later I realized that those who could rollerblade usually could also ski. XD)

The only sad thing about that day was the fact that the 'snow' at skiing slope were man-made! It was basically shaved ice!!!(Imagine ice-kachang, with only ice and nothing else). Sigh... Therefore, to our immense delight, we found REAL SNOW when we went go-karting two or three days later!!!

I couldn’t help but laugh as I think about these events. I guess that if I did that in public I would look like a raving lunatic to an unknowing bystander.
It's pretty late, so I gotta get ready to sleep. So, G'nite, folks!