first time seeing snow and experiencing subzero temperatures (in deg celsius)...it's thanksgiving weekend and i went to lake tahoe for a retreat with the smsa ppl!
i went on an early car with the pro snowboarders bcos grace wanted someone to go along with her on the early car so we can take advantage of fresh snow and snowboard an extra day. it was pretty miserable my first day of snowboarding, as i kept falling down and hurting myself all over, and bcos my muscles were aching so much i just couldn't get up anymore after falling down. it got harder and harder each time you fell.
it's awful, not mentioning scary when i kept sliding off the the edge and sides of the trail! i couldn't control where i was going at all, i couldn't brake or slow down or stop. and we were on the intermediate slopes (which was really scary and steep!), but it was easier to move than on the beginner slopes, which were way too flat for snowboards to even slide.
furthermore, all the other snowboarders are pro/have much more experience, so they zoomed off really quickly, leaving me behind to struggle my way down the slope all cold, hungry and tired :/ even grace has a knack for snowboarding and disappeared in a jiffy! T.T
my second day was much better though, bcos i discovered how to heel and brake and stop, and slowly leaf my way down the slope. i also learnt that if i'm too far to the side, either i leaf back to the middle, or if i fall, i just take off my board and walk to the middle. no use trying to start from the side bcos u'll only slide off the edge.
it wasn't as cold as i expected, mainly bcos the sun was out all the time on the slopes, so it's really quite warm. and as long as the wind isn't too strong, it's not really cold. anw on the first day, after a tiring day of snowboarding, we were greated with a scrumptuous feast for thanksgiving dinner! we had a caterer who cooked all the food, and we had turkey, pumpkin pie, apple pie, brownies, bread and cheese, mashed potatoes, leeks, and lots other foods. i've never had a thanksgiving dinner before, nor such a wondrous home-cooked western meal, so it was really wonderful to experience it. it made me miss home and think of mummy's cooking :/ anyhow we couldn't finish all the food (being asians haha), so we ate them over the next few days for lunch/breakfast etc.
amanda cooked soup using the turkey bones (which was pretty good and delicious!), while we cooked pasta and chinese noodles over the next few meals. we also made s'mores (yummy yum yum!!) with graham crackers, snowman-shaped marshmallows and hershey's chocolate hee. they also baked cookies which tasted great haha. i think i was really well-fed over the retreat xD luckily i did quite a bit of exercise in snowboarding, if not i'll feel so guilty about eating so much and not exercising!
on the 3rd day, we spent the whole day studying (i was reading the whole of my japanese textbook in preparation for oral interview). it was snowing heavily outside, like snowstorm but we wanted to play in the snow, so after a while we just went outside and had a snowfight! it's really fun throwing snow around and playing in it and rolling around!
it's like you don't care about getting wet or cold or anything anymore, bcos your gear is mostly waterproof and protects u from the wind and stuff. plus when it's snowing, the wind isn't as strong for some reason, so it wasn't really cold. after that we built a snow-woman! i made the head yay, even though the snow wasn't really wet enough to stick together properly, i squished and packed the snow until it formed some semblance of a ball, then rolled it around so it gets bigger and bigger and bigger! it's super hard to make a proper snowball though, definitely not as easy as it seems, and you must have a lot of time and patience.
in the end we succeeded, and we had an extra ball so we made a snow-baby that was so deformed we made it into a snow-chicken haha. we stuck a branch that looked like tail feathers on its "butt" xD
on the 4th day, we packed up and headed home. the snow chicken unfortunately didn't survive the snow-plough, and collapsed (or perhaps was eaten by the snow-woman hahaha). the snow-woman was perfectly fine, except that it was buried more deeply in the snow so it "grew" shorter haha. huan chin, who was originally shorter than our snow-woman, was then taller than the snow-woman by a lot! she was happy. xD
we didn't go to vacaville outlets to shop bcos we decided to go straight back to berkeley and study more, but in the end there was a heavy traffic jam so we were pretty delayed anyway. we stopped at in and out for lunch, which was really good. this time i ordered from the secret menu, ordering neapolitan milkshake (combi of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry) and animal fries (fries topped with thousand island dressing, onions and other stuff). they're really good!
ok that's pretty much all for lake tahoe trip. having fallen all over the ski slopes at heavenly resort, i experienced "near death" scares so many times that now, i truly appreciate my life. i could have been seriously injured or even killed tumbling down the slopes, or if someone had crashed into my head or my spine, or if i slipped off the edge of a cliff. life is really fragile, and we should appreciate what we have now.
snowboarding is seriously the most strenuous activity i've ever experienced, as it involves every single set of muscles imaginable, including your shoulders and back and butt muscles!! hence the other takeaway is a huge gain in strength of muscles, and the exercise i managed to do haha.
snowboarding's really scary, but i'd like to learn it the proper way and find out how to become better at it (eg. how to toe, how to curve, how to do garland and navigate harder slopes).
