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I'm writing this in Vancouver in my friend's family's house where we are staying for a few nights having left Whistler yesterday.its really emotional seeing as i've lived there for 5 months.
so to update you on March and April.. had some huuuge powder days which was amazing fun to ski and meant you could go crazy and have a nice soft landing..also taking kids out i made a mistake and ended up wading through knee high fresh snow to search for 7 kids' buried skis..oops.but the kids told me i was better than their other instructors cos i was "more fun" so that was great.
I did have a disaster day when i had to take my valley kids to whistler mountain rather than blackcomb for a day and as i didnt know how slow one of the runs would be we ended up 45 mins late for lunch!
another memorable experience was teaching 2 days of level 5 kids who are so good that i really am not qualified to take them..it included a 4 year old called River who i am sure will be famous one day and have his own ski movie. at one
point he ended up in a tree well and i had to pull him out..theyre so dangerous as anyone can fall into a decieivingly deep hole around tree trunks and get stuck as the snow falls in around you.i took them in the main terrain park, on the boardcross and on black tree runs all day..and then on the easy blue run home one of the boys got wiped out but a snowboarder and had to be taken in a bloodwagon to the clinic!! it so happened he wasnt that badly hurt but if they complain its risky to make them ski incase they actually are hurt..one instructors incident resulted in patrol telling base on his walkie talkie: "i think we have a case of bootus too tightus!"and they loosened the kids boots and made him ski!
other memories from this part of the season...
sun!and mountaintop sunbathing
steve, mine and george's new flatmate, who worked in the grocery store..very useful you might say!he also used to meet me and my valley kids at lunch and whispered things to them to annoy me... when i had had enough of them crashing into me all afternoon i gave them a talking to and one replied sincerely "the man at lunch told us that we had to ski on top of your skis!"
having a habit of playing scrabble and boggle a lot..including bringing the scrabble board to merlins, the local pub/bar, with our new friend xander a snowboard instructor from vancouver.
goodie came to visit who obviously enjoyed the scrabble and boggle playing.
family came to visit so i got to try and teach them with my new skills!
then came the end of the season for the valley kids and club kids..for the last lesson, they all dressed up in batman costumes or fairy princess costumes so skiing around the mountain we heard things like "hey man i wana go on the chairlift with batman over there..sweet costume!" and i am going on a little vacation at the beginnnign of june with curtis one of my club kids to look after him and his sister at a ranch somewhere in BC! so taking club and valley kids has been a real highlight of the season.
i then caught some wierd skin disease off a kid and had to go to the doctor who gave me 2 days off work as its contagious..but jurassic 5 were playing on the 3rd day as part of the massive telus ski n board festival...so i asked the doc to change the note to 3 days off work!! the telus festival was an amazing week full of outdoor concerts...i met jurrassic 5! huge park and pipe contests and freebies in teh village..ended up with a lot of free yop, coke, and a pair or levis!
the last week of teaching was a week long camp of 3 mexicans and a venezuelan, all 3 yeas old and had never skied..was the hardest week yet as 2 were absolute horrors..one couldnt even walk let alone ski.. but on the last day i finally got them to ski and fell in love with one of the mexicans alej who couldnt speak a word of english but we understood each other perfectly..had soem brilliant conversations about power rangers.once i told him that we were going on a bear hunt as this usually encourages the kids to go skiing,..but instead alej tells me in a matter of fact tone that it would be better if i went skiing and he stayed inside to hide from the bears. so i put a plastic rainmac on him as it was raining and said that this made him invisible.however every time we went skiing that week he then insisted that we put the rainmac on so the bears dont eat us!his dad told me he had had the time of his life in ski school so that was a good ending to a tough week!
At this point spring skiing had begun..yay. that means tshirts and sometimes just going up the the top of the mountain in normal clothes nad flip flops to sunbathe.and numerous huge bears were sighted around staff housing and on the mountain..one even arrived during ski school and stole all the massive flowers on the ski school teaching area!
when there was really no point skiing as it was so slushy and sticky and blackcomb was shut : ( i went with 7 ppl to xander's "cabin" on nearby bowen island which actually turned out to be a 3 floor beach manson on the peninsula of the island! 3 days speedboating, bird and seal watching, wakeboarding, crabbing, bonfire making, nargila and eating so so well! and all we paid was 20 dollars each thanks to the efficiency of costco! see how amazing vancouver is..mountians, city and sea so close to each other.
after retuning to whistler we just spent a few days tidying up and saying goodbye..i ahd to scrub the whole apartment down..took about a day!
one afternoon did some "tape decking" which ross and dave had invented by taping daves trainers to a skateboard and then being pulled along by a rope attatched to a bike! did a 180 wooh!
and having procrastinated Miriam and I left whistler a day and 3 buses later than planned and tomorrow are off to Tofino.the surfing hotspot of vancouver island..which is apparently the size of england!
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