Names

So, the coolest thing about Japanese people is there names. Names like Haneda, Suzuki, Nakayama, Tanaka. What's so cool about these names? Well like most names in cultures (I would assume) the names have meaning behind them. And in Japanese, the way you decipher these meanings is by simply looking at the kanzi characters (basically pictures) that make up the persons name.

So let's look at Tanaka. In Japanese, it is written 田中。 The first symbol means field or rice patty, and the second symbol means in the middle of. Thus, if your name is Tanaka, it means you are in the middle of a field...lol. Nakayama, 中山, means in the middle of a mountain. And Nakamura, 中村, means in the middle of the village. So it's pretty cool to see the meaning of the person's name just by looking at how they write it. You can't really make the connection that Wald means forest just by looking at the letters w,a,l, and d very easily...

So this same logic applies to places as well. 東京, Tokyo, actually means eastern lantern, and 京都　means lantern city, or something of the sort. I think Sapporo, 札幌 means frozen river or something like that, I learned it when I first got here but forgot...oops.

So, the meaning of a Japanese name is derived from the symbols used to write it. Now this story is a little old, but we were talking about Japanese names in my Kanji class last semester, and my kanji teacher told us a pretty funny story. Her mother, was born on 3/7, and (according to my kanji teacher) her parents were lazy, so they named her mina. Mi means 3, and na means 7 in Japanese, so her name was literally 37 (three seven). She didn't show us what characters were used to write it, but I have to admit I thought it was pretty funny.

Now I'm going to be even more shallow, and talk about the names of some of the students in my class. Now I realize making fun of someones name isn't the nicest thing to do, but come on, it's just for giggles. The class with the best names last semester was by far my Japanese writing class.

So lets start things off with a guy whose name sounded like imdaunkyou. Or, when you slow it down a little bit, I'ma dunk you lol. Every time the professor called for attendance at the beginning of class and said his name, I just got this mental image of 2 kids in a pool and one of them yelling that. Always brought a smile to my face...

Next up is probably my favorite, tincock. Well you already know where this is going, the latter half of his name means penis in English. What you might not know however, is that tin, also means penis in Japanese. So this poor fellow's name means penis in 2 languages...I can't help but laugh a little when I think about what kanzi characters are used to write his name....

So there were some other funny names in the class but those two are all I remember, and all I care to write about right now. Now if my name means something funny in another language, I would most certainly find it funny. It's just coincidence that language overlap sometimes, and if you don't stop to enjoy it for a minute, I think your missing out on some of the fun of studying foreign languages.

So I guess Monday in Japanese, getuyoubi, is super close to a Russian cuss word. Tuesday is as well, but whenever someone says Monday you can usually see the Russians in the room smirking a little bit. Sougei, pronounced basically soo gay, means to see someone off, and meet them when they return. Keiseiki is super close to basically the worst swear word in the Korean language. It's really amazing how often these language overlap, despite being completely different from one another...

Who cleans this joint?

So I've been getting rather fed up with the soccer team, not because of practice or what not, but because of where we practice. There are 2 gyms on the north side of campus, and I don't think they've been cleaned in years.

The first gym has 2 floors, one is the court, and the 2nd has seating for those who want to watch whatever is going on on the court. This second floor is where we change and stretch and get ready for practice basically before we can enter the gym floor, and it is so incredibly dirty. Theres hair, dust, trash, junk, you name it, all just lying around, on the same ground we stretch on. It's positively disgusting.

Now I'm not saying that I'm the cleanest person in the world. After all I am a Wald...But my allergies just go insane in this place. During and after practice I am constantly hacking and sniveling and such and it's really really annoying. The bathroom is also a complete mess. I don't think it has been touched in several years.

Every once in awhile I see this little building manager running around and stuff, but I don't think he ever cleans...at all.

As for some of the other classrooms and such, it really depends on the faculty, or so I've heard. The international student center is usually...relatively...kind of clean, and I've seen a little cleaning crew run around before, but the classrooms in the ISC are still pretty dirty. The econ building I've been in is usually kept pretty clean actually which is nice, same thing with the Slavic research center, however this other building (insert name here because I don't actually know it) was pretty dirty.


Man I guess I am just a spoiled moron American...

Cultural classes

So this past week the university was nice enough to provide us some opportunities to engage in really traditional Japanese activities.

First up on Monday was Koto, or a type of Japanese harp. This was actually my favorite. The harps themselves are rather large, not very wide, but very long, and you sit perpendicular to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koto_%28musical_instrument%29

So we had 2 hours, with 6 little Japanese ladies trying to help 30 of us play this Japanese song. It was actually a lot of fun. There are 13 strings, and you have 3 picks on your right hand, one on your thumb, and the other 2 on your first two fingers. You can also push down the strings to get sharp notes.

The song we were attempting to play was called sakura, which is a super traditional song, which is about Japanese cherry trees...I think. Sakura means Japanese cherry tree, in Japanese of course...but I couldn't really get the lyrics from the song, and was more focused on playing the instrument than signing the song. It was a lot of fun, even though my fingers hurt pretty bad by the end.

On Tuesday we were doing Kado, or Ikebana, or flower arranging. There's actually a ton of different ways to go about arranging flowers, and they all have their own unique styles and beauty. So I was given a couple of branches from a cherry tree, some twigs, grassy things, and 2 flowers. I began chopping and sticking and moving and removing my flowers and twigs and such, and finally ended up with an arrangement that I was satisfied with. I raised my hand to tell the sensei that I was done and she made her way over to me. She stood, examining my...arrangement...for a couple of seconds, and then sort of sighed in a disappointed manner. I was heart broken.

She then basically took everything out, and put it back in, creating an entirely different set up than I had. I was sort of insulted, but I guess that's the way of the Japanese. Maybe that's why they have so many problems with creative thinking...whenever someone creates something outside the box, they throw it away and force them back into the box....

On Wednesday, we headed to a temple, where we practiced some Soto-zen, or zahzen. Apparently this particular sect had been brought to Japan in the 6th century, and is 1 of the only 2 that are practiced in Japan. The other kind, Rinzai, has temples that are more famous, such as toudaizi (largest wooded building in the world in Nara), but Soto has more followers in Japan.

I wanted to hum...but much to my dismay this sect doesn't really do that :(. We learned a couple of hand positions and breathing techniques, and how to sit correctly, and then we bowed, sat down, and began to meditate. Normally you meditate in a special super quiet hall, and everyone faces the wall. This temple was freezing however, and so the monk turned on the heater, which roared to life, breaking the much needed silence lol. My legs were also hurting a ton, so I think I only got really into the mood for maybe 5 of the 30 minutes we were supposed to be meditating. You also have to keep your eyes open, and your posture is super important, so I wasn't exactly comfortable. Also, if the monk thinks you are getting sleepy, they can wack you with this wooden stick, so the 2 monks that were there were constantly prowling behind us while we were trying to concentrate, which was rather unnerving, especially when every once in awhile you heard the crack of someone else getting hit.

So it was fun, but meditating and such really isn't for me. I'll just go take a nice nap.

On Thursday, I went to the Sapporo snow (or ice) festival that is super popular in Japan these days. There were tons of people, and tons of foreigners. There were 3 sites, one had snow sculptures, another had ice sculptures and the last just had things for kids to do, like snow slides and such. So I only went to the 2 that had the sculptures and stuff.

We (me and a couple Japanese friends) headed to the snow place first, it was super cold and crowded, but a lot of the sculptures were really cool. Some of them were the size of a small house, others were 20 meters tall. My favorite was a sculpture of a famous church in Dresden. Also, funny little fact, all the snow sculptures were made by the Japanese Self Defense Force. Apparently they have nothing better to do that play with snow, while the people in Haiti could use all the help they can get.

Anyway, as the evening wore on, we made our way towards a tower that is at the end of Odoori Park. We went up to the top of it (by stairs btw) and were able to get some great photos. This one is my favorite. The colors are so vibrant and you can see the city and park stretch away before your eyes. I wish it was clear enough to see the mountains in the background, but I am still happy with the shot.

After the snow sculptures, we headed over to the ice ones, and I was pretty disappointed. I guess we ended up going on the last day, so most of the ice has melted somewhat, leaving some of the sculptures in a rather sad state. But it was still fun.

On Friday then I got my hands dirty with Japanese shodou, or calligraphy. I hate Japanese calligraphy...

stuff

Next I would like to discuss something that is very strange to me, but it is something I have honestly never thought about before. I met someone, who is handicapped, and doesn't speak English. You might be wondering to yourself why I find it so strange, but for some reason it was honestly something I never thought about before. I'm not sure if I thought handicapped kids don't exist in other parts of the world or something of the sort, but honestly I have never been in the situation I was placed in this past Monday in class.

So the class was one for the HUSTEP students, aka the class is all in English, however higher level English speaking Japanese students are allowed to attend these classes as well to meet us tall foreigners to practice their English. So I sat down and one of my friends (he is Japanese) is sitting across the aisle from me, and next to him, sitting down is a Japanese girl. We begin talking a little bit because we are in the same group and we have a project due yadda yadda yadda and he introduces me to his friend.

So her name was Fumi, and something about her seemed slightly odd. Now I know that I previously said handicapped, but I think she had a slight case of Autism. In Japanese culture, asking someone else for something is considered, like, well it's just something you try to NOT do I suppose you could say. I'm not saying that it's bad that you ask someone else for something, between friends and such obviously this happens all the time. But I introduced myself, and she introduced herself, and instantly she held out her small hand, and asked me "Can I have some candy?"

I honestly don't know why it struck me so much, but I was honestly speechless. I just sort of stared at her hand for several moments not really thinking about what just happened. Like I said I don't know why, it just surprised me so much and yeah I don't really know. My friend after a second whispers something to her and he grabs a piece of bread (Japanese bread is basically like candy bread) out of his bag and gives it to her and she seemed to be satisfied with that.

I actually ended up not even responding at all, and just sort of turned back towards the front of the class. I really have no idea why I was shocked so much. I still think about it from time to time, I really don't know why...

Last for today, is a short story about a boy being late. So a couple weekends ago, me and the soccer team went to Niseko, which is Japan's most famous ski resort. We were to meet at 7:30 in the morning, to catch the 7:45 bus, but alas, like most group trips, there's always that one late kid. Now it's been awhile since I've been on a group trip, but I was pretty shocked by what happened.

So 7:45 rolls around, and we hop on the bus at the train station, and so we are sitting on the bus, and a couple of the guys have been in contact with the late kid, and he is apparently on his way to the station via taxi. This is 7:45. 7:47 rolls around, and supposedly the kid has gotten out of the taxi and is making his way towards the bus. At 7:49, I see him round the corner, and like a little kid, my face lights up because I am super happy the kid made it. The bus driver was nice enough to wait 4 minutes, and I turned to the kid next to me to express my happiness about the late guy still making the trip.

Much to my surprise, the guy next to me, along with the rest of the soccer team, was completely silent, sitting there looking rather solemn. I was pretty shocked by this. I stopped and tried to think for a second about what would happen in the states if this had happened, and well I am pretty sure everyone would be pretty happy the guy had made it, even though we DID make the bus way (4 minutes) they would still be happy he made it.

This was not the case with the Japanese guys. When the guy finally put his stuff down, he came back to where most of the soccer team was sitting and started to apologize, but no one really said anything to him. And I don't mean any kind of apology either. In Japanese there are levels of ways to say sorry, from friends using slang that would translate as "my bad" to saying sorry to your boss which would literally translate as "I humbly have no reason for my terrible actions." Lets just say he was using something that was closer to the latter. None of the other Japanese guys did anything though. He apologized several times, to everyone, and we all just sat there, completely silent.

After about an hour or so I asked the kid next to my why and he said it was because we had made the bus wait for us. I appreciate the Japanese system of transportation and how prompt and on time it is, but damn, this was pretty ridiculous. Before the late kid had arrived a lot of the guys had been saying "残念ですね” which translates as 'that's too bad,' so I hope they were using it in, a regretful manner, rather than the more literal meaning of the translation, but honestly after seeing how the situation unfolded I can't be sure which one they meant.

googuru

Hello everybody!

So I've got 4 finals, 4 papers, and 4 final presentations...not much time to write a blog, but here I am!

I've got a couple of things to write about, but I will try to keep it short n sweet. So a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go drinking with a couple of guys that work here at Nestle in Japan. I was able to meet one of them through my Japanese zemi, and he had expressed interest in the possibility of me teaching English to a couple of guys at Nestle. So we went to this American style bar which had a ton of import beers and drinks and stuff, and we sat down, me and 2 guys from nestle for a while to discuss things over.

In case no one knows, Japanese business men are called salary men, or sarari men in Japanese, and there is no limit to how much they work and sacrifice for their company. The one guy had worked a 20 hour day previously, and had already worked 11 hours before meeting up with me to go out. That is crazy.

We arrived at the bar around 7:00, but around 9:00 one of the guys got a call from work. He excused himself and spent 15 minutes talking on the phone, before coming back and saying that he has to actually go BACK to work. This is at 9:15 on a Friday night, that he is going BACK to work. He said that the majority of the employees were actually still at work. So it was just me and another guy talking and eating and drinking till around 10:30 the other guy came back from work. Honestly ridiculous.

So Japanese bars are extremely expensive by the way. For the 3 of us, from 7-11, the bill was 190$. Honestly ridiculous.

At around 11, another guy from Nestle got off work and decided to meet us, so we decided to meet him at a different place, so we walked a couple of blocks over to a Chinese joint where we met up with him. We were there till around 12:30 when we finally decided to call it a night. It was actually a lot of fun. We talked a bit about Japanese and American business, some other business type things, the difference between a cute girl, and a beautiful girl, and it was overall a very enjoyable evening.

Japanese researchers, and other academics studying Japanese language have been unable to figure out where the heck Japanese language comes from. Their written system comes from China, but their grammar is closer to Korean, but neither of them really make sense. There's not so much correlation between languages English and Latin, but I think I have finally found the answer.

Japanese people, and their language descend from WOOKIES!! That's right, the walking carpets from Star Wars are ACTUALLY the ancestors of the Japanese people.

Now of course I am joking, but I will tell you why I think this is true, Japanese people love food. If you remember, in episode 6 of Star Wars, on the moon Endor, chewie sees a small dead animal strapped to a tree, and without thinking, grabs it to start digging in. ITS A TRAP! haha. But really, Han states that chewie is "always thinking with his stomach," which I think applies perfectly to the Japanese people.

I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were talking about Europe. I was talking about how I wanted to go there to see the museums and architecture and to see a real soccer game. He commented that he wanted to go there...to eat the food!!

In my reading Japanese class, we were reading an article about Japanese people smoking, and a company that took a survey. The results of the survey showed that people who smoked, and were shown pictures of diseased lungs, yellow teeth, and other nasty things that go along with smoking, were actually LESS LIKELY to quit smoking, than people who were simply told "if you stop smoking, food will taste better." I was shocked by the results of that survey.

And finally, Japanese people eat like vacuums. Traditional Japanese portions are pretty small. You get some rice, some oddly shaped balls of things here and there, and boom that is dinner. But man sometimes Japanese people eat like 3 times as much as I do. Last Sunday night I went to a ramen joint with a couple of the guys from the soccer team, and we all got giant bowls of ramen. These are huge bowls, like a 4.5 inch radius bowl, with tons of noodles and other floating goodies inside. At each table though, were baskets of boiled eggs that we could eat along with our meal for free. So before we even get our ramen, we all open 2 up and chow down because we were mega hungry. Once we got the ramen though, they didn't stop. By the end of the meal, the SMALLEST guy at the table, had eaten all of his ramen, and 7 hard boiled eggs. SEVEN!!! That is nuts. I think like 4 hard boiled eggs would fill me up, let alone 7, plus all the ramen and stuff on top of that. I was honestly shocked.

Oh, and in my dorm we have a tv in the lobby. There are only 6 channels, though, which is kind of lame. But 2 of them are news and show channels, 1 is 24/7 soap (zz) channel, and the other 3 channels, yes 50% of the channels, are 100% of the time cooking show channels. They make the food network look like pretty bad. I mean, they are constantly cooking good on these 3 channels, with different shows and different hosts going around Japan finding strange foods (haha yeah imagine that, Japanese people finding something STRANGE in Japanese cuisine...) and eating them and yelling 'umai!!' which means basically tasty!

So whether or not Japanese people are actually descendants of Wookies (Hey it was a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away) has yet to be proven, but I think I may have found an interesting clue.

Happy Happy new year!

My first blog post of 2010! Yay for insignificance!

So 'happy new years!' in Japanese is akemasite omedetou gozaimasu. Just use the same vowel sounds as Spanish and you can get pretty close without knowing any other Japanese. I thought it would be handy to know this phrase in preparation for the new year, but, well, not really.

Japanese people do xmas and new years a little bit backwards, or should I say the total opposite from Americans. We get together with family, eat tons of good food (wish I could have some :/) and give out presents. Then on new years eve we party like it's 1969, 1999, or 2009 yay, and we see our friends and have fun.

Japanese people don't exactly party on xmas, but it's traditionally a time for couples to go out together, grab a drink and spend a good evening together. And new years is the family time.

So I actually didn't see any Japanese people on new years eve, and thus never even said the phrase so a Japanese person...fail.

But I did learn that happy new years is feliz anyo nueva in Spanish!! hooray! You may be wondering why am I spouting out Spanish in Japan, well it's because I went to a fiesta for new years! wee!!

By 5:00 on new years eve I still had no plans. Hadn't really figured anything out, and time was winding down. I made a couple of calls and one of my friends said that he was meeting up with an American buddy of his, and he invited me to come along. So we showed up at said friend's place around 8, and we hung out there for around an hour and a half, and then we set out for this party that he knew about.

We got to a little restaurant that had been rented out for the evening, and converted into a small party room. There were only a few people there, but they streamed in as it got closer to 11, and by 11:15 the tiny room was jam packed with people from all around the world. For the most part everyone at the party was Spanish speaking, or of European descent. People from Spain, Finland, Columbus, Poland, and Libya. If we were in Tokyo, or maybe Kyoto I would have not been so surprised, but it was really amazing to see so many people from different backgrounds in Sapporo Japan. Turns out the only Americans that were there were me and the 2 guys that had brought me.

12:00 rolls around and everyone was singing, laughing, and dancing the night around. I shared a couple versus of feliz navidad with a guy from Panama, that was pretty funny. A Brazilian (brazziolion, how much is that again) was lighting fireworks in the street from his hand....which was rather dangerous, but he was able to not blow his arm off. darn.

Overall it was a pretty fun night. I am not going to lie and say that I didn't miss any of my friends/family/everyone and everything in America, but it was nice to meet some new people from different corners of the world, and share the joy of ringing in the new year.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that the Buckeyes won? WOOHOO!! Finally we weren't beaten by some crap SEC hicks, or crappers from the PAC. I actually got to watch the 3rd quarter via skype and my dad pointing the camera at the tv. Believe it or not the picture was actually pretty good.

Finally, if someone were to ask me what I miss about America the most right now, I would honestly have to say food. Typical American yes I know, but the 5-10 meals that I have cooked for myself the last 3 odd months have begun to lose their taste a bit. I find myself thinking in my head "Gee brain what do you want to eat tonight? The same thing we eat every night pinky, eggs, bacon, and toast!"

However, cooking allows me time to sit back and think. And I've been thinking a lot about how much homework I have. I have 4 final papers, 4 final presentations, and 4 finals. That's really not so bad, but this last week has been absolute murder. Never before in my existence have I had to do work at this time of year. Normally in between xmas and new years, I vegetate like a mushroom, or go skiing, or do anything...besides homework. So it's been really tough to motivate myself recently, but I found out why!!

Yes...I have finally found the answer. People of non-Asian descent are genetically lazier than people of Asian descent. You see, some odd 3-4 thousand years ago (maybe a little more recent I have no idea...) a couple of guys were sitting around a campfire looking at pictures they drew. A couple of the guys had created this cool new system where if you put pictures of stuff together, it means things! Like let's draw a cliff, with a rock in front of it, and that will be the picture for rock! SWEEETTTT!!

Some of the other guys at the campfire weren't so impressed though, they were too busy checking themselves out in the mirror or something, so they didn't really pay attention. When the other guys tried to teach them the language of writing, they said 'screw this' and they decided to use symbols that represented sounds, not ideas, to write with. So today, we have 26 letters, and the Japanese language has....5k Kanji...including this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang_biang_noodles

That kanji has 57 strokes, and you have to do all that work just to write NOODLE....


And therefore, we have found my ancestry, and why I am lazy...sometimes.

1st Ski Trip

So yesterday I had my first opportunity to ski here in Sapporo, and let's just say I am little bit sore today.

So me and Alex left our dorm at around 9:50, and headed for Sapporo Eki. From there, you can actually purchase ski packages, that include everything from transportation to your actual lift ticket. So for 5800 yen, around 65 dollars, I was able to get a round trip train and bus ticket, ski rental, and 4 hour lift pass. I'd say it was a pretty good deal considering the train ride was 20 minutes, and the bus ride was another 20 minutes.

Once we got to the place I started getting super excited because I actually haven't had a chance to ski in 2 years. I was thinking that it would be like riding a bike you know, just grab some skis and head for the nearest black diamond. Well I wasn't right, but I wasn't wrong either. I was also super worried they would not have boots big enough, but they did.

So boots on, gear equipped, we went up several floors and out onto the snow to the familiar sight of a line at the bottom of a ski lift. Their express lift was nice because it had a full cover so the wind wouldn't tear at your face when you got near the top, but I think they were lying about the express part...

When we finally got to the top, you couldn't see anything more than 15 feet in front of you and the wind was screaming. We chose a red to go down first, a dark blue in America, and we set off.

As a quick side note, I love my ski boots and my skis, they are reasonably short and are made for doing tricks and going off jumps and things. The boots that I was given...were too big and the skis were suuper long.

So about halfway down I sort of fell...like a moron. It wouldn't be the last time. The conditions were terrible, and my goggles were fogging up, so I was actually having a hard time doing anything. There were huge snow drifts, but you couldn't see them at all, and moguls on parts of the hill where one would REALLY not expect them to be. So the first run had already turned into a disaster...fudge.

On the way up the lift then, I did something that I've actually never done before. I dropped one of my poles. I've honestly never been as embarrassed as I was at that moment. I've never done that before, never even come close to doing that before, but I was trying to wife off my goggles and I slipped my glove off, along with my ski pole. Moron.

So the 2nd run down we got to try to go down in between the snow lift towers. Normally this isn't so bad, except that the ski lift was above a FOREST, not part of the ski slope.

So we went halfway down the slope to a point where we could...easily...enter the forest to try to get my ski pole back. Little did we know that the snow was at least 2 meters deep, and not packed at all. So 15 feet down, I just sunk into the snow and fell down. And literally, I felt like the kid in Christmas Story, waddling around on the ground trying to get up. But the snow was honestly so deep, that I would put me hand down through it to try and push off the ground, but I would have to submerge my head in the snow before my hand would touch the ground. I felt like saying "Damn, were in a tight spot!"

So I finally used a small bush/tree thingy to pull myself out of the hole I had managed to fall into, and started off again, only to fall down again 15 feet later. It was honestly terrible. I was starting to get super tired fighting against the snow, and I was starting to think that it was impossible to find my ski pole. The other guy I was with had made it down a bit farther than me, but by then I couldn't even see him.

I managed to sort of roll/ski down to where I had dropped my ski pole, but I couldn't find it anywhere. After 15 minutes of futile searching I finally gave up and started down towards the bottom of the ski lift. I thought I was in the clear towards the bottom, but didn't see a 10 foot drop, so I went flying out of control into a wall of snow. On one hand it was kind of fun, but at the same time I was really tired and upset. I dug myself out and went around to the entry of the ski lift area, but I didn't see the guy I was with anywhere. I waited there for 20 minutes, and he finally showed up. Apparently he had had tons of problems as well, but had found my ski pole. Then rather than going straight down, he tried to cut through 30 yards of forest back to the ski slope. He said the snow was so deep it was up to his shoulders almost, and he is probably around 6'1" tall. He said he had to use his skis to push down through the snow to make his way out. Man this was not going so well.

After that he wanted to go down a black hill, so we got off at the top, and went down a path that was red, then turned into either a green or a black. So we stopped at the top of the black, and it looked pretty bad...snow drifts, moguls, large bumps that would turn into an unwanted jump if you hit them incorrectly...not exactly what I wanted to go down at this point. So we headed down, and sure enough after a few seconds I ate snow...lots of it. And the worse part was that it was steep enough that I just slid...another 20 yards down the hill before I finally managed to stop myself. Then I had to crawl like a strange animal back UP the slope I had just fallen down. Not fun.

When I reached the bottom my friend was already waiting for me and I told him that I had to switch these skis in before they killed me. So I got some smaller boots, and shorter skis, which fit me a LOT better. From then on it exactly smooth sailing, but I also wasn't eating snow for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...

Overall it was a pretty good day. The weather was super bad and they actually shut down half of the part, but there were still enough runs to keep us occupied. By the end of the day I was tired, cold, and starving. Hopefully next time I go it will be a little bit better :)

More photos on my facebook.