Skiing in China

We skied three times in 10 days! The first time was a Thursday during vacation, then a day rest, then Saturday and the following Saturday. Now we need to wait until next year. This place we go is about an hour and a half drive, and it is really small.

The snow is man made, and the slopes are not steep at all. It is actually just a hill, not a mountain at all. In general everyone there is learning to ski. Most of the Chinese people can't ski at all, and they crash all the time. They run into each other constantly, they ski like they drive!

The first time we skied was during the Chinese new year holiday break. Damon had to go to work, and the kids still had school off, so I met some friends up at the mountain. We had a great time. The kids had huge smiles on their faces the first couple times down the hill. There is a "magic carpet" you can take up. You stand on it like a people mover at the airport. The run is so small, you can walk up faster than taking the people mover. Trejan went straight down and stopped at the bottom by falling. Nicole learned to turn really quickly and so she would snow plow down really slow and turn at the end. After a few times, she was ready for the chair lift.

The chair lift is pretty close the chairlifts in the US. I get a little worried about safety when I think too much about it, so I just don't think about it. I was going to have each kid wait at the bottom by the lift while I took the other one up. The next thing I knew, instead of waiting, Nicole was on the lift by herself! She astonished me with her confidence and courage. No fear at all! Because the lift is so short, you can see the top of it from the bottom. There is only about 30 seconds where they are out of sight, so I felt pretty comfortable letting her go with her friend (and her friends' mom).


The third ski day we had Damon came with us, and he tried snowboarding and skiing! He is a natural, but can't say he'll spend hundreds of US dollars when we move back home to continue this hobby.