boxing day

We had to meet for our snowboarding lessons at the ski lifts at 9.15am, Man was it a different sight to the day before there were people everywhere! All the ski instructors had bright blue jackets and all the snowboarding instructors had bluey grey ones, there must have been 100 instructors alone in the mass of people. There were 7 people in our group, our instructor was Croatian but had been living in the states for some time. We had to take a gondola (like in Rotovegas) up to the ski school (aka beginner slopes). First he got us to attach one foot to the board and just scoot around like you were on a skate board just to get the feel of it (this was on flat ground of course) this was absolutely exhausting and my leg that was attached got quite sore up the calf and ankle. Then we went up a little slope and we had to click in both feet and he showed us how to stand up, and how to kinda shimmy side way sort of zig zag down the hill. He took each of us down the slope by ourselves and kinda guided us and helped us up when we fell down. He then showed us a slightly easier way to get up you had to lay on your back and swing your legs around so you ended up laying on your stomach and from there you could push yourself up. I didn't use this method very much as it involved kneeling and I didn't like standing back on to the slope. Note at this point that neither of us really mastered this zigzag move at we found out the hard way later that unfortunately that is how you slow down. Snowboarding is all about where the weight is on your feet eg weight on your toes will turn you one way weight on the heels will turn you the other, if you have the board perpendicular to the slope keep the weight on the slope side of the board to not go anywhere or attempt to stop. We then moved to a slope that was longer with a slightly gentler gradient to practice turning and stopping. Again he took us down 1 by 1 to about half way down the slope then we just had to keep practicing.

There are so many things to think about keep your knees slightly bent, back straight (thats the tricky one) where are you focusing your weight so all this whilst trying to avoid other people who are also learning to ski or snowboard. Now when you are learning you fall down a lot, and then of course you have to get back up again which is so exhausting its amazing how much easier it is to get up off the ground when its flat and your feet aren't joined together! Scott tended to fall forwards and I tended to fall backwards. You would just start to get the hang of it and then you would pick up too much speed and freak out and crash, or someone would get in the way and you would freak out and crash. I had some quite spectacular crashes. It was the last run before lunch and I was going really well managed to make a few turns and then there was a bloody australian ski instructor with her whole class stopped in the middle of the slope, I didn't trust myself to curve around them so bailed fell forwards and felt my feet and board flail up behind me and hit me in the bum. I got up and tried again and again I went about half the length of the slope but then got a bit off to the side where it started going uphill a bit freaked out fell backwards and did a very impressive impression of a giant plow there was snow flying in all directions I was absolutely coated.

For lunch we jumped back on the gondola and went right up to the top of the mountain to the chateau. It was a shame we didn't have a camera there were so many ski's and snowboards stacked up on the racks out side it was incredible. The was sort of a food court inside it was so nice to be in the warm. I thought it was quite a dag in the cubicles in the toilets they had little metal baskets attached to the wall for your gloves etc. After half an hour we jumped back on the gondola back to the baby slopes. We had about an hour until the end of the lesson, I did one more run and wiped out about half way down it felt like i had pulled something in my thigh so I decided to walk the remainder of the slope and call it a day my knee was pretty sore by now and no longer had the energy to pick myself up off the ground or take the hard hits. Scott was waiting for me at the bottom so we both hopped back on the flat escalator thing that took us back to the top of the slope and I stood there talking to the instructor while scott kept going. The lesson ended at 3pm so we started heading back down the mountain I know it sounds early but of course it gets dark at 4pm.

So we had to lug our gear all the way back to the hotel to change our pants and boots then lug it all the way back to the base of the ski lifts to the rental place. I felt like I had been run over by several buses my right knee was covered in bruises and absolutely huge, my right arm was also swollen above where the wrist guard was (I think that might have been caused by eating with a knife and fork with the guards on cause i couldn't be bothered taking them off) and I had to bee extremely careful sitting down. Scott had a sore thumb! Actually his thumb is still sore, the swelling around my knee took 2 weeks to go down. We had a fabulous day but snowboarding is evil!

Catch you guys later.

love Monique and Scott