May 29

Written by: author
5/29/2008

     The two friends and I were warm in the dimly lit bookstore. They taught me Ping An Ye—Silent Night. It was a good Chinese lesson and a sweet time together with them. This is the first song I've learned in Chinese. I hope to learn a few more—later.
     Right now, I'm far too busy having Christmas parties for my classes.  Last week, I had two parties. I'll have two more this week. Final exams are also taking a lot of my time. Some of the parties I'm having are to make up for giving exams on Christmas day. My students thought I was so mean to give them exams that day. Why? I don't know, since they don't celebrate it anyway. I think they were just trying to discourage me from giving them an exam. Of course, it didn't work. :)
     Last week, I was supposed to have a party for one of my freshman classes on Wednesday at 4, but in class on Tuesday, my very talkative student Pure informed me that their class had a ski trip on Wednesday from 2 to 4.  They wanted to have the party at 5, but I didn't want to feed them dinner, so I insisted that we have it at 6 instead. Then, they invited me to go skiing.
     Of course I went. I was very skeptical, I must admit, that we'd be able to ride the bus, get skis, ski, and then ride the bus back in only 2 hours.  Amazingly, we did finish in just two hours! As it turned out, there were a couple hundred students going on the same outing.  We all rode on three buses; we were crammed in!  When we got to the park, I saw very quickly that we were not downhill skiing, but cross-country skiing, which was entirely ok with me.
     We got in two lines—a boy's and a girl's line—and the lady at the door let five of each go in at a time.  I don't know why we were split up into boys and girls; it didn't make a bit of difference when we got inside.  We just walked along the wall until we saw boots in our size and took them and put them on and left our own shoes wherever.  Then, we walked through rows of skis and poles and took whatever looked good.  Then, we filed outside and walked toward the lady yelling through a megaphone.  I guess she was giving instructions on how to put on the skis and ski.  I'm glad I already know.
     The equipment was pretty nice.  I wore brand-new Fisher boots and skis.  And the ski loop was ok too.  I had fun skiing up and back encouraging my students and trying to teach them.  One girl's ski broke half way around the loop, though, so I gave her one of mine then skied on one ski, pushing myself along with the other leg and carrying the dead ski in one hand and my poles in the other.
      At the end of the loop were three hills of varying difficulty.  Everyone was crowded at the top working up the guts to tumble down.  Not me.  I borrowed my ski back and weaved through the crowd to the top of the steepest hill—it was nothing, really.  And skied happily down.
       I didn't even go fast enough to make one turn, but it was fun to go fast.  Everyone was impressed.  The instructors who were standing and watching the chaos asked my students if I was an exchange student.  They said, No.

Rachelle :)

    --contributed 12/2007

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