So in week 16, I learned how to ski!....or at least kind of. I certainly tried my best.
Before I left for my ski trip, we had a surprise birthday party for Hailey! I have an embarrassing video of her screaming for five minutes straight because she didn't expect her creepy friends to be standing in the dark when she walked in (who could blame her honestly). But I got to make a cake! I made it all from scratch. It was at that moment that I missed my Betty Crocker cake mixes that I could whip up in around 10 minutes. I didn't even have an electric mixer, so I had to mix everything by hand...like some sort of animal. But it certainly came out great!
Also I got to eat this burger at a mall. It was an a great, all around American experience.
But that picture up there was the very Naive Kim before she went skiing. You see how I'm smiling? That's because skiing hadn't kicked me around yet. For reference, after my ski trip, my legs were absolutely covered in bruises. But hey I had tons of fun so it was certainly worth it!
Even when I had to take a break from skiing because I had fallen too many times, I had the scenery. So before I detail my skiing experience, I just want to show off this view!
The night we got to Kaprun, Austria, we were led on a torch hike. Which if you've never been on a torch hike, it's exactly what the name implies: hold a torch, hike. This is me holding real live fire. Somehow this was allowed to happen.
Bonus points: I didn't set myself or anyone else on fire! AND our guide had the same accent as Jon Snow. I kept raising my torch and whispering "KING OF THE NORTH!" at my guide when he was far away enough that he couldn't hear. More bonus points: I still have friends after that.
So I think the first problem I had with skiing was the lifts. They're quite high off the ground, considering the peak of Kitzsteinhorn (the mountain I was on) is 3,200 meters tall (for my americans out there, that's about 11,000 feet). No matter what system you use, we can all agree that's high. So the ski lift scared me a little bit but nevertheless I was excited to start skiing.
I had ski lessons that didn't help with my confidence in skiing too much, especially considering I almost slid backwards into a ditch, but I did learn the super mega basics and that's pretty important. We asked our instructors if they thought we'd be able to do a blue path (which is the easiest...supposedly) and he said "Sure."
Not feeling exactly satisfied with that answer or wondering if maybe it was a language barrier thing, I asked another time "Okay, but do you think we'd be able to do them at all? Or would it be risky?"and I received a comforting "sure." Yeah great, thanks.
So us skiing newbies found a blue path in the area and it was anything but easy. Sure, it would be easy for someone who had been skiing since birth, but the hard right turn and steep slope right at the beginning didn't seem like something I'd be able to do. But some braver ones attempted it while I decided, so conveniently, that I definitely needed a hot chocolate and I'd maybe come back. Soft maybe.
The next two days of skiing were not completely disastrous, in that I didn't break anything, but I was incredibly bruised and, most impressive of all, I did a backwards flip (maybe more of a backwards slip) with my skis on. It was quite painful but I imagined there were judges on the mountain, giving me scores on cards. I would give myself an 8. It was 10 potential but the landing was unfortunately not there.
Here are some pictures I took while on the mountain:
When I had breaks from ski lessons or took a long lunch break, I went to the tippy top of the mountain. The view was absolutely incredible as you can imagine! The second day I went, it was really foggy but still looked incredible!
To wrap everything up, check out this mushroom ravioli I had for dinner one night!
That's all for this week, hope everyone has a great new year!
