Brian Head!

This might become a very long post, because I'm sitting right now and to be perfectly honest I seriously doubt I will ever get up again. My entire body hurts and that has a reason. For the past two days, Monday 21 and Tuesday 22, I have been at Brian Head, Utah, to snowboard.
What? Cille? Snowboarding? Yes, that's right. It was my first time on anything like ski's or snowboards. It surprised people, because I am from Europe and in Europe it's cold. I don't remember for how many times I have explained that the Netherlands is flat, and my parents are just not the right people to do something cold, intensive and slightly dangerous. So, my firsr time, at sixteen years old. It came with a lot of falling. A lot lot lot of falling. But let's start at the very beginning. *A very good place to start.*

(Now, that song will stay in my head for the rest of the day. Great.)


On Monday morning, President's Day (read; another free day in tha U S A !), we left the small town of Logandale. The drive up to Brian Head took about two to three hours. When we arrived we (fyi, 'we' is a group of 9 foreign exchange students) got out of the car and started walking to the snowboard rental place. I started feeling pretty dizzy. Altitude. We were up 10,000 feet. Now I don't know how much that is in meters but trust me, it's high. When we walked inside it started getting worse. Eventually I decided to run off to the bathroom and nearly passed out. Great start of the day. I was given some Gatorade and taken to the Ski patrol to put me on some oxygen. After about 10 or 15 minutes of breathing straight oxygen, I was free to go again. I felt great. I don't know whether it was the oxygen that did it, or the looks of the guy who gave it to me, but I felt good again. I went off and got my snowboard and boots and immediately went outside, because my lessen had already begun.
My snowboard instructor was pretty good-looking too. So was one of the guys in my group, and pretty much every other guy around. I felt lucky. Haha. Anyway, snowboarding. I sucked so bad in the beginning, you have no idea. I fell all the time, couldn't even stand up on the thing. Getting off the lift was terrible. Everything hurt and I hated everything and everyone. I am the kind of person who gets really mad when something's not going perfect. When it was lunch time I threw my board in the powder snow by the side of the piste and went inside. I considered doing skiing but didn't want to give up (read; wanted to go back to my snowboard instructor). So, brave as I was, I ate lunch, grabbed my board, and went back on the bunny hill.
Surpisingly, I got off the lift without falling. I did a whole lot without falling. Everything suddenly went how I wanted it to go. My instructor was proud of me too and I suddenly loved snowboarding. After my lessons were over, I went off the bunny hill (which wasn't really a bunny hill.. it was pretty dang scary if you ask me) a few more times and at 4.30, the lift closed and we went off to our hotel.
The hotel was a lot nicer than I expected. It had a pool, a hottub, a bar, a really fancy restaurant, and a lot of other stuff. We ordered pizza in our room, watched tv, talked a lot and had a great time. Sleeping didn't go that great. We tried, but half the people in the room had a cold and couldn't breathe through their nose, didn't like the bed or the pillows, it was too warm or too cold so the ac went on and off, and well, I didn't sleep for longer than 30 minutes straight, I kept on waking up.

So you understand that when the alarm went off the next morning, I yelled some bad words inside of my head. My body hurt and I wanted to sleep. But I got up anyway and we went back to the piste. No lesson that day, so I went off the bunny hill with the whole group, after which Caro took me on another hill.
The lift went up really high and I was really scared, because there was NOTHING to protect you. I could've easily given Caro a little push and she would have been dead. It was worth it, though. The view from up there was amazing.
We went down a few times, ate lunch, after that I did some more boarding with Ploy and Sarah (Caro had gone and joined the group of people of people who actually KNEW what they were doing. I couldn't blame her..) and I did better every time. I did some major falling still, but I did better.
At the very end of the day I managed to get off without falling once. Now it was a pretty long way so I did sit down, but on purpose! I was so proud of myself..

At 4 p.m., half an our before the lifts would stop, I was left alone and my body was totally done. My head still wanted to go go go, but my legs said no and collapsed every time I tried to stand on them. So I went inside, turned in my stuff and got changed. I bought a Starbucks coffee, and sat.

And now, everything hurts. I feel pretty sorry for myself. But everything was worth it! I love snowboarding, I love snowboarders, I love snowboards. I still hate snow. But I had a blast!

I will post some pictures in here. I'm still waiting for a lot of pictures, though, so I will post those later if they're worth posting.

Love,

Cille