There’s a first for everything.

I’m not the type to push myself out of my comfort zone, but when I do push myself, I only push myself 5%. Even during summer, I leave my house like 10 ten times out of the 3 months we have. So the thought of doing something like skiing was beyond my whole thought process.

This all started in my study hall. I was with my regular group of people, and we were talking about what we are doing for intersession. For the first day of dismissal I was going Ice skating and I was set on that, but for my second day of intersession… I wasn't really sure.

As I was sitting in my study hall with my friend the conversation started to shift. From talking about school working into talking about skiing. The topic of skiing never really came to mind. Plus, I have never skied before, so there's no reason to do it now. They started to try and convince me to go with them for intersession. I tried to refuse, but convincing words were thrown hard:

“It’s not that hard.”

“We’ll go on the bunny hill.”

These were more than enough reasons for me to go and sign up. When we got on the website, we saw that there was only one spot left. My friend and I quickly started to press and hit my chromebook to get that spot as fast as we could. When we finally got the spot, we celebrated, and then quickly pushed to go and get a waiver. From that day until the day we were actually going skiing, I was on my phone learning how to ski, and watching all kinds of tutorials.

Then the day of the ski trip comes; it's lightly raining, and it’s taking a long time for the bus to come and pick us up. I start to get concerned with everything happening, and with the fact that we might not be able to go if it starts raining any harder. After 20-30 minutes, our bus finally arrived and we started our trip to Pat’s Peak.

I was intimidated because I was unfamiliar with this place and didn't really know where to go. A teacher guided me to the rental area where I got my helmet, boots, and skis. I started to walk and realized that it is really hard to walk. Finally, after reaching everyone, I began my journey to learn how to ski.

At first I was very confused, and I struggled. I started to feel a bit cloudy and dark because I hate to struggle, and prefer my path to be smooth without anything stopping me. As soon as I was about to reach the peak of my struggle, a kind stranger took pity on me, and helped me put on the skis. I felt accomplished, until I started to walk. As I tried, I felt the slick ground pull me away from the hill. This repeated until my teacher pulled me up to the belt. As soon as I reached the top, I wanted to get back down. I was scared to fall, and afraid to fail, but I needed to go down the hill in order to learn. As I went down, the snow felt so smooth beneath me and I felt so free in a way that is unexplainable.

This scared me a bit because it was a lot longer and steeper than what I was used to. I built up the courage to go down, and I ended up falling. I tried to get up, but when I tried I fell down again. So I just slid down. Finally, it was the end of the day, and we took the bus back home. I was really happy with myself and the fact that I did something new. I was truly grateful for this opportunity.

© Consuelo. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.