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Sunday, April 11, 2010 @ 9:13 pm
POST 346.
Time to face reality.
I'm back from my 8 day trip in Switzerland. It was, awesome. I'm already missing the food, the snowboarding, insane snowball fights and the endless bitchin' late at night. I'm still suffering from some jet lag. I woke up at I believe, 3am last night and couldn't sleep for an hour and when I say that, I mean eyes wide open. Then this morning I could barely stay awake in all my classes. If it weren't for the browsing of snowboards online (Yes I'm planning on getting myself one), I might've fallen asleep in class.
Till now, I'm still missing Switzerland Les Elfes. That means I really had a terribly, great time there. I won't bother uploading the photos since they're on my facebook but I'm still going to brag about the trip :) I'm going to leave out all the boring details or this post would never end. Basically every night we had some activity together as a whole group but due to my fail, memory, I can't really remember most of them. So here we go, starting with day 1.
Day 1
✈ Hong Kong --> Zurich, Switzerland
(About 10-12 hour night flight)
✈ Zurich, Switzerland --> Geneva, Switzerland
(About 30 minutes transit flight)
Geneva Airport, Switzerland --> Les Elfes, Crans Montana, Switzerland
(About 2-3 hour bus comfy coach ride)
We arrived in the afternoon, if I'm not wrong. I had to carry, my luggage up a flight of stairs, into the resort small lodge, only to realise I have to carry it (and it's heavy) another 2 flights of stairs up to the first floor, room 4. Immediately, I grabbed the bottom bunk bed when I entered. Apparently I couldn't choose my roomies but they were two very, nice people so I was glad :) We settled down and then had a small tour of the town if I wasn't wrong, while some stayed behind to get their ski boots and snowboard boots.
I did have a slight jet lag, especially since I only slept maybe 3 hours on the plane and another hour on the bus. Not only is it hard for me to sleep on night flights, it's even harder to sleep when someone's leaning right over to your shoulder, leaving you with half a seat space to sleep. I suppose you get the point. We met with another group of people there from UAS in Dubai so there were us, 4 from Discovery College and about 10 to 15 from UAS.
Day 2
I woke up at 7:15 am (with the alarm of course) and all three of us, meaning me and my roomies, had already gotten ready by 7:30 am. We headed down for some breakfast which was 4 different kinds of cereal, bread with marmalade and what I believe is strawberry jam, orange juice and milk - buffet style. Karina, Joycelyn and Chi Man joined us a little later and after that, we all took our dishes out to the counters and went to get our snowboarding boots. (We missed the session where most of the peeps got theirs because we went in town shopping. Ha.) It was a little chaotic and hectic in the morning, which was expecting since it was day 1 of snowboarding/skiing. While I was trying on different boots and getting a board and a ridiculous protective helmet, people were coming in grabbing their stuff and leaving while others came in saying they had problems with their gear. Oh it was a busy morning. They told us we were expected to be up at the slope by 9 am, I highly doubted it :)
By the time we all were ready and sitting on the gondolas up to the mountains, it was already about 9:30, 10 am. It was a looonng ride up, switching from a 10 minute blue gondola ride to another 10 minute red gondola ride before we finally made it to the... baby slopes. Yes, I'm not kidding, baby slopes. Jenni (our instructor for the whole trip) first taught us the basics - bindings, goofies and regulars. Surprisingly, I'm a goofy (the majority are regulars) where my right foot is usually left strapped in and my left foot does the walking. Once we got all that, we moved onto balancing on the board while keeping a foot strapped in as well as skating. After that, we went back (yes BACK, another 30 minute ride on the gondola) to the lodge for lunch which was fab. The soup and bread was great so I definitely had all my energy replenished, not that I used much for the first lesson anyway.
After that was when things got hard. We started to learn the different ways of braking, starting with heel edge. Right there, I began my series of endless falls on not only the butt bone, but knees. Yes, ouch. Till the end of the lesson (about 3:30 pm), I still didn't quite get it and had already fallen more than 20 times down the baby slope. At night we played who wants to be a millionaire and ha, we (Karina, Joycelyn, Sheena, Pauline, Chi Man and me) came in 2nd which was not bad, considering our opponents were pretty well educated. Lol.
Day 3
After experiencing the long wait on the morning of day 1, we decided to take things a little slower that morning, still waking up at 7:15 am but took our time to have our breakfast and get changed. As usual we went back to the baby slopes and practiced the heel edge for the first half of the day and then went back for lunch. Again, the lunch was delicious. Chef's a genius, what can I say. Like before, I fell on my knees in the beginning, even with the board landing on my back (from the huge impact of the fall, like OUCH.) but after awhile when I returned in the afternoon, I fell on my bum instead which probably felt like heaven after all those painful falls on ice, on the knees. :)
But hey, at least it's on my bum this time round but just when I taught falling on that was better, I was wrong. And just when I was slowly grasping the heel edge, Jenni moved on and taught us the toe edge. Literally, going down the snowboard backwards, standing on our tippy toes. I wasn't afraid of losing balance on my tippy toes, I was more frightened by the fact that I was going to have to go down, unable to see what's behind me. And hello, if I did fell backwards, what if I rolled down the baby slopes like a giant snowball? Stupid, but possible.
So thank god I didn't fall on my back and roll down but I did, fall on my knees. A lot. And going down on those tippy toes, wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. It was painful. I went back already feeling the muscle aches kicking in and thought about what a loooonnngg day the next day would be. If I didn't remember wrong, we did shopping that afternoon right after we returned from my snowboarding/skiing lessons at 3:30 pm. Then we did some sledging down the not-so-great snow in the afternoon (which was totally unexpectedly, fun, especially with the 5 people sledging) and we did at night though I think it was the group music quiz. Oh well. :/ I still didn't quite have a good sleep that night though. Sometimes, it got too hot, sometimes too cold.
Day 4
I woke up at 7:30 am that morning, seeing how annoying it was every morning I was too early and I could get some more extra sleep. And of course, as expected, the muscle aches arrived. All over my body, especially my legs. We went back to the baby slopes for one last day in the morning to practice our turnings - heel edge to toe edge, toe edge to heel edge. Obviously enough, I didn't quite get it. How could I when I sucked at my toe edge though I finally, finally figured out the heel edge. So again the whole morning I was falling on my knees and butt, a lot. Painful and tiring to get back up, especially with the extremely slow and crowded (with baby skiers) magic carpet.
Lunch was the usual yummy soup with bread and, I think, lasagna. Have I mentioned what a genius the cook is and how tasty the lasagna was that the whole huge plate for the six of us was practically empty? And how could I forget, our favourite drink there each meal - Ice Tea. With just those three things, my lunch was yummy, and all the butt and knee aches were gone :) Then we went back to the baby slopes again to practice our turnings from one end of the slope to the other. In simple terms, doing a heel to toe, toe to heel edge diagonally. If I recall correctly, I believe the night activity was a torchlight walk. Literally, lighted (fire) torch and walking into the dark woods with icy snow that can, kill. But it was fun, sledging down on our butts in the dark. The only thing that freaked me out was the fire torch. I kept thinking it was going to get my hair or set me on fire. Lol.
Day 5
We practiced a little more in the morning at the baby slopes our turnings before making our way to the real slopes. As always, I still couldn't get it. I could kind of turn, like a 30% chance where I'd be lucky and do a heel to toe edge and immediately, toe to heel edge, kinda making this 360 circle turn down the slope, without, falling. Or almost, falling I should say. After lunch we took the blue gondola to the slopes instead, not baby slopes. Real slopes - medium level. They were colour coded - green for easy, red for medium, black for experts. We went to the red slopes. Immediately one half of me was thinking, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap while the other half - yay, no more baby slopes.
I heel edged all the way down, seeing how "steep" it was for me to do turns and thinking about the pain of landing on my already bruised and aching knees and butt, the more I didn't want to turn O: Going on the heel edge down all the way, was indeed tiring but exciting. And this is speaking from personal experience. I've skied for 7, 8 years and done snowboarding just for those few days. Snowboarding, is way more exciting and fun than skiing. Honestly, and come on, it definitely looks way cooler, you can't deny that :) But then again, it's wayy harder to pick up than skiing. There is a lot more skills and things to know with snowboarding.
For the after ski activities, we went to a cinema to watch the movie Shutter Island. I was pretty pumped at first but just died a little more inside each minute. First thing I found out when we went in - no popcorn, just chocolate M&Ms, then the movie was in french, with NO english subtitles. Brilliant, at least Celine was there to translate some of the main things that was going on, for us. However, I really highly do not recommend that movie. It's pretty insanely, weird and bizarre. Sides, how exciting can it be when I slept through practically half of the movie?
Day 6
Even I'm getting a little tired of this long post :)
Woke up at 7:30 am as usual and took rreeeaaallll slow to get ready and still, ended up having to wait for the rest of the group. We went back to the same slopes and went up, down, up, down the ski chairs. Yes, I've finally learnt how to go up and down the ski chair on a snowboard. Surprisingly, pretty straightforward and pretty easy, as long as the person next to me doesn't fall while getting off.
We practiced a bit of the turnings and I actually did, try. I tried. And failed, falling on the not-so-hard-and-icy snow, which was, a little better. Though it still bruised my knees and twisted my left thumb. And then I tried to twist it and put it back to place, and it worked. And then when we got back, more shopping where I bought loads of chips, a huge bottle of Nestea, Meringues, or actually every trip we went to town I bought a 0.80 Meringue, another of my favourite pastries there. Yes and I bought 2.3kg of swiss chocolate. Then at night we had a music quiz, hilarious as hell the group names were - Team name (our team name :)), The Pooverts, The Chis (all in honour of Chi Man), The Pickles, 6 Pack. I thought I was going to kind of, ace the thing but apparently, all the music played, weren't really the kinda music I listened to. Bah.
Then at night I was in Karina, Chi Man and Joycelyn's room bitchin' till 12 midnight. Btw, it was hell making my way back to my room all pitch dark. I hate the dark.
Day 7
We made our way back to the same slopes again, going all the way down to the mid blue gondola station this time and back. Had the usual yummy lunch as always and went back to the slopes. One thing I forgot to add all this while, each day there was an insane, snowball fight. I wasn't even part of it and I got snowballed. Even, iceballed. And of course the falling didn't stop, it kept coming but not as frequent as day 1. Still, I lost count after awhile.
In the afternoon on our last run, Jenni decided to bring us snowboarding all the way back to our lodge, instead of taking the gondolas which was what we usually did. Oh boy, that was some run alright. It was flat, and then steep and then uphill and then flat and then uphill and steep and it kept going. The snow wasn't particularly great either, it was either ice or slushy which was slightly better but it was hell taking the snowboard off and putting it back on when we hit a flat surface then steep. I was getting quite annoyed and pissed after awhile just because of all the falls and me getting exhausted from getting up, taking my board off, dragging it 10m and then putting it back on. It was tirrriinnggg and a very long day. When we got back, I believe we went to the disco at night and had a prize giving. It was kind of sad it was the last night and I wasn't really ready to go, especially after all the fun. That night I had a real good night sleep, most likely from the long day I had, and the aches. :/
Something I forgot to mention earlier too. I twisted my left thumb and elbow! To make things worse, little ski kids were getting in my way on the slopes, making it so hard for me to maneuver round them and so the only thing I could do to stop myself from running into them was to fall and ouch, falling on my already twisted elbow - Not cool.
Day 8
Les Elfes, Crans Montana, Switzerland --> Geneva Airport, Switzerland
(About 2-3 hour bus comfy coach ride)
✈ Geneva, Switzerland --> Zurich, Switzerland
(About 30 minute night flight)
✈ Zurich, Switzerland --> Hong Kong
(About 10-12 hour night, transit flight)
I'm going to try and keep this short since I still got to get right back to my work right now. We snowboarded more in the morning till 1pm where we had the last, yummy lunch before packing and leaving at 4pm. I was pretty good I'd say in my heel edge and my switching from right foot parallel to left foot but my turnings, bwah bwah. I still didn't get it by day 8 O:
I really didn't enjoy packing too much either since there was so much clothes and somehow they didn't quite fit into the luggage (when they did when I came!). I wasn't too happy to leave either since I had such an amazing time at Les Elfes. With that said, I pretty much slipped into "moody" mode as I boarded the bus and looked out of the windows as we left. And then I slept for perhaps 1 -2 hours and then another 9 hours on the plane which I probably shouldn't have, according to my dad because now I'm having a jet lag :)
Once I came home, I uploaded the photos, added peeps on facebook and tried really hard to get myself to face reality again - school, loads of unfinished untouched work. O:
My mind and time zone's still in Switzerland. I'm still missing the trip and everyone there. I refuse to acknowledge the fact that I'm now back in Hong Kong and have to get back to reality. I refuse to face reality O:
Injury count: muscle aches all over, kind of twisted elbow and right thumb, bruise on knees, my butt bone hurts O:
... I miss my meringues, snowboarding, Les Elfes, shopping in town and the snow (despite it being icy).
DAY 4 OF OPTIMISM.