Skiing!!!

Tonight I had my very first skiing lesson! Besides that time at during SMUX orientation camp where we had 1 hour lesson on skiing at Snow City, which was really lame and not considered a proper skiing lesson. It was so fun, so exhilarating.

Jimmy's pants were plenty warm. And I wore thermals underneath, so it was fine. The down jacket's not good for skiing but it would have to do cos I don't have a ski jacket. I had a hat which kept my ears warm. The problem areas were my hands and my nose. The gloves that I have aren't warm enough nor are they waterproof, which led to cold and numb hands. My nose I had no way of protecting so it worked at protecting itself by releasing lots of mucus.

Okay enough on the attire. (You didn't have to read that paragraph, it was more for my own reference next time. Oops, should I have told you sooner?) Tracy, Xavier and I got a ride to the slopes from a Taiwanese guy and his friend. The guy was going for Intermediate Skiing. As we arrived at the slopes way early, he taught us a bit first. We started with falling and getting up. At first, I was afraid of falling, but by the end of the night, I was so used to falling that I can get up on my own already. We learn a bit about braking and tried out the bunny slope. It was intimidating initially. But rather fun after some attempts.

As the lesson started proper, my assigned instructor was Jim. He has had 16 years of skiing experience if I didn't hear wrongly. In good hands eh? We started with basics, leg positions and such. Going down and braking. Turning left and right. Then we tried the bunny slope. We did turns on the bunny slope, kinda like slalom, you know, except baby style. Hehe. Getting up the slope was on this rubber travellator like thingy, so no need to climb. But it kept jamming.

After a few runs down bunny slope, we moved to a longer, higher slope. First, we had to be taught how to get on and off the chair lift. Getting on was pretty easy, just stand there and the chair will scoop you up. Really. Getting off, well, that's quite a problem, cos I wasn't prepared for it. It's just a decline before the chair lift turns. So u're supposed to kinda just glide down. But cos I wasn't prepared, I half glided, half rolled down the decline, right in front of my instructor. So funny. The slope is actually quite high but the instructor made us go down slowly in zig-zag patterns, so we made slow progress down hill. Wasn't too bad. I made it down safely (to be able to blog about it). I heard though, that Tracy almost skiied into the forest. Luckily her instructor saved her.

The adrenaline's making me write a lot. But it was fun. Good things must share. Haha. Can't wait for next week. Wonder what we'll be doing?