Trip to the Snow

All last week I was battling a really bad flu and praying for a miraculous recovery because I had planned to go skiing on the weekend with my dance teacher Sally and her family... maybe not the best idea... but I was determined. I stayed home from work, uni and dancing all week, rugged up, got horizontal as my Dad says, and tried to get well in time for Friday. By Thursday night I still wasn't feeling 100% but I made myself get out of the house for a few hours because I was starting to feel very un-human being holed up in my pj's for the whole week. It was really hard for me to just sit on the couch all day, I kept trying to weasel my way out of it by "just" doing this or that because I was so restless! It's very difficult for me to just relax and do nothing. I'm constantly on the go and I hate not having anything to do, so needless to say I had issues with the whole definition of "resting". Although it was good for something, as I managed to log a lot of hours watching Grey's Anatomy on DVD...

Anyway, Friday morning rolled around and after much finger-crossing, I was feeling a lot better and determined to go! Mum had her doubts, but after making me promise not to run into any trees, dropped me off at Sally's. Jammed in the car with Sally, her husband Michael, daughters Emi & Jordan and another girl from dancing Brittany, we set off on our road trip. No sooner had we gotten out of Penrith did Jordan ask "How long til we get there?" I had to laugh. However we soon distracted her with a Bratz DVD and there wasn't another peep until lunch time.
Finally we arrived at our rental house in Adaminaby (yeah, I have no idea where that is either!) which was cosy despite the retro 70's style decor! The only downside? It slept 10, and the only bathroom was located off what was to become mine and Brittany's room! So no matter how quiet people tried to be, we usually got woken up numerous times during the night.

It was pretty cold and later that night it began to snow! I was so excited. I'd never seen snow fall from the sky before! It was cool. Amidst the excitement Michael's brother George, his wife Belinda and their girls Jessica and April arrived. April was just the cutest thing ever and was an endless source of entertainment!

With all these people, you can see how the bathroom predicament got a little crazy!
To make matters worse on Saturday, our planned skiing day, Jordan woke up with a fever and vomiting bug, poor thing. However she toughed it out and we pulled on all our rented ski gear (all my stuff was pink, to my delight!) and headed for Mt Selwyn. After the half hour drive we made it and trekked through the parking lot to the snow fields. The men were sent off to buy ski tickets and the kids (including yours truly) had a snowball fight. Finally it was off to the ski slopes where I realised I wasn't sure I remembered exactly how to ski. Last year Michael taught me, but this year he had his hands full with Brittany, who had never skiied before. Fortunately I managed to figure it out for myself and I very cautiously went down the baby run.
However that meant I had to get on the chairlift and I always seem to have issues with this. Very clumsily, I made it safely on and managed to get off again. I'm sure I looked ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as when I attempted to catch the tow-bar up the mountain. This was a motorised lift like a chair lift- but without the chair! Instead it had like a round seat you lean- not sit!- on but you must stay standing up and lean forward to let it pull you up. I'm hoping you get a sense of the difficulty involved here. Of course everyone makes it look so easy, so I'm thinking yeah, no sweat, I'm a dancer, I've got balance, I can do this! Yeah right! I stacked it not once, not twice, but three times! The third time I was so close to the end and before I knew it I was on my butt again. You'd think I'd fall over in the process of actually skiing, but oh no, it was getting the lifts to the top of the mountain that ended with me on my butt.

By far the funniest "stack" occurred when Brittany and I attempted to use the t-bar to get to the top of one of the bigger hills. By this time we had employed a mantra of "let's just do it!" and thought we were pretty cool too! The t-bar, not to be confused with the more tame tow-bar which had me holding up the queue with my endless falls, requires 2 people to sit/lean on a t-shaped thing which pulls you up the mountain. Again, everyone in front of us made it look effortless. The first time we were rockstars and made it up the top without incident. Well that is if you can call Brittany screaming everytime her skis hit a bump and me commentating everytime the t-bar inched lower down our legs. I'm hoping you get an image here. Two beginner skiiers, going up this quite steep slope, basically freaking out. Getting the life up the slopes was scarier than actually skiing down it!!! We thought we had the hang of it however, until we attempted to go up a second time. Neither of us knows what happened, but before long Brittany and I ended up in a tangled mess of ourselves, boots, skis, stocks and the t-bar. I don't know if anyone has any experience with this, but it's quite hard to get up wearing skis. It's especially hard when you've got twenty people gawking at you as they wait in line and every so often more skiiers come past looking so high and mighty as they successfully ride the t-bar right on past us.

Despite our mishaps, we had an absolute ball and I was an absolute champion skiier, so much better than last time even if I do say so myself!

The next day was home time, but not before we scoured Koszciousku National Park for a decent hill to go toboganning. We found one and wasted no time getting into all our ski gear and climbing the hill before whizzing down to the very bottom. Emi had a great time giving her parents a heart attack as she trekked to the top of the hill and launched herself down it, ending up out of sight and needing rescuing from Brittany when she landed in a creek! That kid never got tired of climbing up the hill, unlike Brittany and I, who lasted and hour and half before calling it a day and racing with April and Emi respectively in our laps.

The whole weekend was a blast and as soon as I finally learnt how to post pictures on my blog you can see some of it for yourselves.

Memories

A few weeks ago I went to the retirement party for the principal at my old primary school Claremont Meadows Public School. Mr Reid was an awesome principal, he was always so interested in what the students were doing and really fostered a community atmosphere at what was a brand new school. I only went to CMPS for 3 years, starting from Year 4 in 1998 when the school opened. I remember the excitement of starting at a brand new school with its fresh brightly painted rooms of lime green, orange, purple and hot pink! I also remember the nervousness because although I knew a few people from my old primary school, I wondered how we would all fit in and mesh together. As usual I need not have worried and I had a great experience for my final years of primary school. My teachers interacted with me as if I was a person, not a child which, as a teacher-in-training, I really respect.

Mr Reid gave a speech and it was great. The only thing was because he has Parkinsons, he was shaky and I was so sad to see him like that because he wasn't able to be as active and fun as I remember him being. He was slow to walk up the stairs and a little bit slow when he talked. Afterwards my friend Amanda and I went up to him while Mum talked to my teacher Mrs Smith. There was this whole crowd around him, so it took awhile but I took a photo of him, myself and my friends Amanda and Deanne from our year 6 graduation to show him to help him remember. When we finally got to speak to him I told him how I had such a great experience at the school that he created and how it inspired me to want to become a primary teacher. He was happy to hear that and said I had great role models from the teachers we had at CMPS. We took a new photo with him as well, and I asked if I could give him a hug! He said of course and I found myself getting quite emotional. I guess as a kid you have this idea that the people you look up to are sort of invincible and will never succumb to the deterioration that comes with age. I just can't imagine Mr Reid ever not being a part of CMPS. He was truly the life of the school and he will be so missed. I can only hope to be half the teacher- and person- that he is.




Me in Year 4, my first year at CMPS.







Me, Mr Reid & my friend Amanda.







Amanda & I with Mrs Smith, our teacher for Years 5 & 6.

Weekend musings...

This past Friday was an important day... not only because it was the 08/08/08 and the Olympics started, but because it was the 20th anniversary of the death of a family friend's baby, who was only 9 months older than me. His name is Dane and I often wonder... because of our closeness in age, would we have been friends? I've seen photos of him and I think what would he look like now?

On Friday, my mum said to me how odd she felt that Dane's mum doesn't have a 20 year old in her life yet she does. I said no, but she does have a 22 year old and a 19 year old. Mum agreed, but said it still made her think. She said it made her appreciate me especially on that one day. That day, I felt a little bit more excited about being alive. I'm generally a happy person, but I have moments where I look at the sky or sunset or rain and think how great God is. No one knows why I'm still standing on this earth and Dane isn't. But I appreciate it!


I didn't have much of an exciting weekend, but it was good all the same. On Friday I was happily sleeping in since I didn't have anything to get up for, when I got a phone call from PAC asking me if I could work in the Sick Bay because the woman who usually does was - you guessed it- sick.
I tossed it up for a while before I decided I needed the money- private schools pay well!!
I'm going skiing in 2 weeks, and while I can't wait to go, I can wait to fork out all that money!
Friday in the Sick Bay was an interesting day... truly one of highs and lows. We'd have no "patients" for half an hour and then boom! 5 patients at once! I saw everything from headaches to asthma to cut knees. Oh! and one case of vomit and a few involving quite a lot of blood. We even thought we had a broken arm at one point but it turned out the kid was just a bit dramatic... It was definitely a different way of working in a school, one that I'd never thought of. But it was good to see another side of education, and I need all the experience I can get!

And as usual, I have a funny kid story. On Saturday I rocked up to dancing and the little kids were rehearsing their routine for the America trip. I was wearing a t-shirt I got from a Brooke Fraser concert, and it had a big 'B' on the front. As soon as she saw me, Emi yelled out "B for Leashy B!" I'm sure you're aware my last name doesn't start with a B, in fact it starts with a P. And no, Emi didn't have her letters confused. To the contrary, she's actually very intelligent... but anyway, one day during the many that I've babysat her and Jordan, she came up with the nickname "Leashy B" and it's stuck. I've asked her countless times why she choose Leashy B instead of Leashy P but she doesn't have an answer. I call her "Emi F" in response, but it doesn't have the same ring...