Skiing!?!

So more time has passed and I’ve been crazy busy. This past week I was leader again which meant that I had to plan a devotional every morning and organize any classes or activities that we did. Tuesday we went and met an Eco tourism and Recreation Management class in town. They are planning a trip to the Florida everglades so we swapped stories with them and showed them some of our pictures from our trip. On Wednesday and Thursday we went to a ski hill and learned how to telmark ski. It is harder than snowboarding or normal skiing, and yes we looked very silly trying to learn it. The skis are similar to downhill skis but your heals are not stuck to the board. To turn you have to put one ski in front of the other, bend down so that one knee is lower than the other, put your skis on an angle, bend your body in a C shape, and keep your upper body facing down the hill. Ya it was a bit confusing! So I could do this clumsily starting half way up the bunny hill, and when I went to the top you ended up seeing me rolling down the hill in a cloud of white. So in the afternoon of the second day Melinda, Esther and I got annoyed and took the chair lift up to the top and just started bombing down the hill seeing how fast we could go. This was fun, and I eventually had to learn how to normal ski so that I could slow down without snowplowing or falling. By the end of the day we found a hill that you got air just by going fast enough, it was great fun! Next week we are going to a cabin in Bruce Mines about eight hours away and having a winter camping trip. Our plan is to build quinzhee (kind of like an igloo) and sleep in them. I’m not too sure what else we will be doing but no worries I will update you all once we get back.

Let the New Year Begin!

Well I made it home to Saskatoon safe and sound, but as most of you know my flight was delayed because of a storm. I was pumped though because I got a first class seat the next day since the plane was completely booked! They gave me a pillow and an amazing meal. Seeing everyone at home was awesome, but there definitely were not enough hours in the day. Erica was planning a New Years Gala which was a dessert night that had a bunch of skits, dramas, and dances. I ended up being in one of the skits and running the kitchen the night of, so that kept me quite busy. One of the things I did with my family was make a ginger bread village which was totally awesome if I do say so! I also visited with my relatives and got to go snowboarding twice.
Then my holiday was over and now I am at Medeba and have already gotten back into the swing of things. For our first day we got to learn how to backcountry snowshoe and ski. They are both quite fun and since we have at least two feet of snow it made it even more enjoyable. Then on Friday we learned how to ice climb! I thought that it would be similar to rock climbing, which it is in a way, but it is also completely different. You have two ice axes and crampons on your feet (spiky things). To climb you need to swing both axe into the ice so that your arms are strait, then once you have them firmly in (which is quite hard to do) you have to walk (aka. smash your crampons into the ice). So while you are doing all of this you have to remember to keep your elbows at 90 angles otherwise the axes come out and you fall. We only got to climb a little because there isn’t much ice on the wall yet, and it is melting today so who knows when we will be able to climb again but I definitely will have to practice. Well that’s it for now but happy New Year everyone!