Day 2 of skiing was awesome. It started with a little review of the magic carpet. This was a great place to warm up and have a chat to your fellow ski students. An astonishing 80% of the guests here at the moment are Australian (this is unusual apparently) the remainder are mainly Japanese, Singaporean, Korean or Taiwanese.
The instructors are from all over the world, today ours was Korean. He started to explain (with a lot of hand signals and demonstrations) what he wanted to teach us for the day and then we were off to chair lift one.
What followed was a day full of giggles, wide eyes and the beginnings of burning legs! We had everything happen; from falls, to people heading into the scrub for a tree hug, a lost ski on the chair lift and an amusing introduction to a button lift (This is where my limited experience in NZ came in handy, I knew you are not meant to try and sit on the button!).
All the while, our instructor stayed cool and calm. At times his eyes widened in surprise or even alarm at some of the things that happened. He paused thoughtfully and then went off to help fix the situation. When it was sorted he would return to the group and brightly say ‘Ok, let’s go!’
Everyone else’s experience became your experience. We learnt from each other. We watched people doing well and tried to emulate it, we watched people doing things wrong and tried hard not make the same mistake. The advantage when something went wrong, was we had the chance to look around while our Instructor sorted it out.
I saw my daughter several times wizz past me in her Mini Club group. She would wave and the others in my group were astonished this was only her second day on the slopes. My son also passed me on the snowboard, making some cool hand signals and carving up the snow. I did see my husband once or twice but mainly he was further up the mountain.
What was clear in every group we came across, was how attentive and patient the instructors were. Nothing was too much trouble to fix and they were constantly giving you tips to improve. In fact, everyone on the mountain was so polite and helpful.
Only once did I see anyone look slightly annoyed and that was the button lift operator. After three of my group fell off in a row he did look a touch weary! This was probably because it was the first time I had seen a line form at any of the lifts (it is amazing there is no wait here at all).
I received the news I would be moving up a group again tomorrow!!! Then, as has become our usual routine, the family met up in the bar at 4:30pm for a drink and a snack. We exchanged animated stories and chatted with another family whom we had met in our lessons.
Dinner was again extraordinary (I will have to do a separate blog dedicated to the food here), then we joined in for an entertaining quiz before we all fell into bed at 9:30pm.
TTB
The Travel Bee 