Skiing - it really hurts

On Friday I started to weave and for my first time I think I did amazingly well, so I have started with a couple of pictures to show what I'm good at before you reach the part where I tell you about my skiing experience :o)

Finnish people seem to get stranger every day, on my long walk to university on wednesday when it was -7 I was wearing a lot of layers whilst everyone I passed was wearing short jackets and jeans etc but on a day when it was -1 a day where it can be quite warm people around me were wearing thermal gear, it all seems very strange to me how they are like that.

This weekend I went Skiing in Jyväskylä which is just over 2 hours away from Hämeenlinna on the train. On saturday I spent the day teaching myself how to ski on the kids slope, it was quite amusing how I was surrounded by children between the ages of about 3-9 who could ski perfectly then there was me a 20 year old girl trying to stop myself crashing into them, after a while I managed to get the hang of it and was quite proud of myself.

I spent the night in the ski resort hostel watching Finnish dubbed disney channel cartoons which was quite amusing and what I thought was the try outs for eurovision (their host is no where near as amusing as good old Terry Wogan).

Today I had a snowboarding lesson first thing in the morning which seemed to go really well I managed to stay stood up 90% of the lesson whilst learning how to direct myself, turn and also learning how to shuffle myself down the slope forwards and backwards (it's hard to explain but it was all good fun), once my instructor left me I headed back to the kids slope to improve on what I had just been taught, unfortunately the next few hours turned out to be the complete opposite of improving, every time I went down my board went the opposite way to what I was doing and where I wanted to go and I kept repeatedly falling over or crashing into children, I think I only managed to go down the very small part of the slope properly 2 times, it was fun trying even if I did bruise myself in the process. Later in the afternoon I went back onto the ski's progressing more and more, finally I plucked up the courage to go on the big slope (only half way up tho) I was doing really well until one unlucky time when somebody cut up in front of me whilst I was speeding down the slope, I tried to swerve around them but unfortunately I turned too far and lost my balance and ended up summersaulting and landing on my head, getting hit with my ski sticks in the process too, this was the final crash my body could take for the day so I had to retire early.

Although I am battered and bruised it was such a good experience and I hope to do it again one day in the near future.

xxx