End of winter adventure

It is now truly spring, the snow has melted away; except on the mountains, and the temperature is above freezing. It is a nice time of year when we get to see everything coming back to life again. At the end of winter/beginning of spring I had a little adventure. As most of you know, this is my second year in Slovakia and I live in a town really close to the High and Low Tatras, they are part of the Carpathian mountain range. Anyways, skiing is very popular in Slovakia especially around here. Schools even take one or more classes of students for a ski week. My school actually has two ski weeks, one week is for the Second year and Sexta students (about 15-16 year olds) and the second week is for the Tercia students (around 11 years old).



The students and most of the gym teachers go and stay at one of the ski resorts from here and ski or snowboard all week. A week or so after both ski weeks (two weekends ago) one of the largest ski resorts had a special, 15 euros for 2 1/2 days of skiing. That is a really good deal since it usually costs around 20 euros for a day. I decided I would go skiing with the group going from school. I had my jacket, hat, gloves, layers, sun glasses and some borrowed snow pants. This was my first time skiing in March and my first time skiing on a mountain. I was excited, but nervous too.



The ski resort was really crowded and when I saw where we had to go just to get to the runs I knew I was in for something very different than I had ever done before. You see, there is a chair lift part way up the mountain to get to the first level of ski hills and then more ski lifts to get to other parts of the mountain. I had skied before, but it had been a while since the last time and so I was nervous. I ended up going with a group of friends who are also teachers and we were having a good time. However, my day of skiing came to an early end. During our second run of the day I was going faster than I wanted and when I tried to slow down I lost control and ended up crashing, but the ground broke my fall nicely. I got pretty banged up but was able to walk away from it, though no one would let me walk on my own. The ski rescue person who came after one of my friends called them was very nice. He didn't speak much English, but he was very helpful. My friends also took good care of me. After I was released from the ski rescue people we returned my skis, boots and poles and they took me for some lunch. Then we went to the hospital for an X-ray just to make sure I was really alright. My face stung a little and I had a slight head ache that would come and go and my left wrist hurt, but the rest of me felt fine.

The X-ray showed that my wrist was not broken so it was sprained. They wrapped me up and told my friend who told me what I should do for it. They took me home and I took it easy for the rest of the day. The next day I was pretty sore, but within two days I felt fine except for my wrist. It is still healing, but I have full motion and can use it some, it hurts from time to time so ice and Ibuprofen help with that. Hopefully whenever I end up skiing on a mountain again I will have get to really enjoy the day and not get injured.