skiing the spanish way

Sunday, Jan 27, the school had a ski day! And for me, for once, it actually was a "ski" day, not just a board day called a ski day because it's more conveniente/easier/more general to say. And why was Joni, the intrepid boarder actually skiing?

Well that would be because it was cheaper. And when you've got the euro workin' against you, you go with the cheaper option. However, since I hadn't been on skis in four years, I went with snowblades, the fun, short ones (that I went ahead and assumed would be easier). The ski hill (and "hill" it was) that we went to is called Javalambre and although is at the same altitude as Bogus Basin (my home mountain) is nothing like it.

Basically a mountain of fake snow and bunny hills with one red run (their system includes green-easy, blue-intermediate and red-"hard"), I imagine it's about the same as Great Bear in Sioux Falls, SD.

Thanks Mom and Dad for never wasting the money and waiting till we had real skiing in Idaho. :P Even though it was January, being that we were in Spain and only an hour and a half away from the Mediterranean, the skiing conditions were like spring...lots of grainy snow and slush.

However, I still enjoyed myself. I think it was lucky that I was on skis instead of a snowboard because the skis gave me just enough of a challenge that I still enjoyed my time even though the snow was crap. The other nice thing about the day was there was a snowboard snowpark competition going on that day so although I did see a lot of pathetic attempts at rail-riding and jumping, there were also some great ones.

Which of course inspired me to do some jumping of my own on the random little jump trails on the "mountain."

No worries, I really am in control although I apparently look out of control, and I landed the jump quite nicely, thank you very much. All in all a good day spent mainly with Allyson (americana)

and random different Spaniards from the church and school (which I managed to not get any pictures of, of course). But I did get one of me and my roommate, who's learning to snowboard and doing a pretty good job of it too, I'd say.

Here're "los Americanos" at the end of the day.