(Final Entry) Goodbye China, Hello Austria!

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All good things come to an end, and this year in Hainan has definitely been one of those 'good things'. I can't believe the amount of crazy experiences I've had, the amount I've learned about China (or at least two bizarre corners of it) and Chinese language, and I'm returned home safely from it all to my family and dog. Thanks for following this blog and I hope you enjoyed it!

The last entry is a bit of a twist in the story: Literally the day after I arrived back to a very much unchanged East Worldham home, I flew straight back out to Austria to start a ski instructor course. Strange in July, yes, but this glacier had the remains of snow even now. Can I describe for a minute how strange it was to be in tropical China one moment, return to a rainy and familiar English countryside home that I hadn't seen for 10 months, be collected from Slovenia's Ljubljana airport a few hours later, driven to a sunny lakeside Austrian community event, thrown into the middle of Austrian dialect conversations and persuaded to take part in a dragon boat race tournament, falling in the lake, playing beach volleyball with no beach, waking up again not really knowing where I am or what language I should be speaking and then travelling up to 3600 metres above sea level in full ski gear ready to start drilling moguls? Not really. It was absolutely bizarre. It all happened so quickly that I couldn't orientate myself to what place I was in or get used to the sudden abundance of white people. It honestly felt like I was on drugs or in a strange dream.

After 10 months of forgetting all the German I'd ever learned, and a few years of no skiing, the course was a real challenge and definitely not as relaxing as it sounds. The 10-day course of getting up at 6am and back home at 6pm followed by more studying ended with theory tests including avalanche rescue, first aid, ski history and Italian language (otherwise all in German) and practically we had to deliver a practise lesson and be tested strictly for technique in various demonstration runs. By reading Italian phrases on each chair lift run, copying history notes from another instructor, and bits of help from my friend Alex who I was staying with the whole time, I passed the course and have finally come home to good old unchanged East Worldham for the summer.

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Photos

our group
I am on the left, skis backwards, head forwards

Comments

[Oma]

Hi Pete! Great to know you are somewhere-Turkey I believe or Greece ? I shall miss your blog- it was great and you certainly made the most of it and lived to tell the tale. Much. love and hopefully not too many more adventures in the next week from oma