Jan 30th ski trip

A lot has happened in the past two weeks. I will do my best to recall the details. Saturday, January 30, I woke up at about 5:45, in Jonathan’s dorm. I put on layers of clothes because several of my friends and I were going up to Mt. Shasta to ski and snowboard. I was in the minority with skis (I think I would have enjoyed snowboarding better; but I still had a fun time making memories and getting to know some different people). There were eight of us all together.

It was a beautiful day to ski and the ski park had just gotten a foot of snow a night or two earlier; so the slopes were nicely groomed. For the first half of the day I went down the Marmot--the mountain with the easiest runs on it--a few times with Adam after going down a pretty steep slope with Cassie. I was quickly humbled. Cassie is a very good skier; she would ski for about 30 seconds and then wait for about 5 minutes for me to catch up :s I was going slow because it was the first run of the day and it was awkward for me switching from snowboarding the time before to skiing now.

So, coming back to Adam. It was the second time Adam had gone snowboarding; so I enjoyed teaching him what I knew to do (and not to do) from experience. He was a fast learner and did well for it being his second time. He went from falling about 20 times the first time down with me, to about 5 times the fourth and last time with me. It is fun to watch someone improve so quickly.

After I spent time with Adam I went up the Coyote--the highest mountain-- with Jonathan, Katie, and Song Ung (one of the Korean girls). It took us an hour and a half to get down when it should have only taken 40 minutes; but it was definitely worth the extra time. :) We all had a great time! I took my camera down and the two girls had a camera, so we would go down a little ways and stop off to the side for a photo shoot, then we would go down a little further and take more pictures, and a little further and so on. The funny part was we would only take a few pictures at each spot, but we had to take those pictures three different times for each camera :D. Anyway, we finally made it down and eat at the cars and then I had to take my group back to Redding to be sure my skies got turned in on time. But when I started to get out of the car at the rental spot, I realized I put my skies on Jonathan's car. That was kinda embarrassing; but it turned out fine.

The next day Sounds went to Red Bluff to sing in the morning, and they didn't feed us there so Dr. Nic took the group to KFC for lunch. I thought that was very nice of him :) That was the first service played my violin part without any finger taps! It was OK but my knee was shaking uncontrollably and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Jonathan told me later it was very obvious my knee was rattling through my pant leg. But that's all part of learning an instrument, and I don't remember my hands shaking very much! :) We sang that afternoon at North Valley in Redding, and I did the first half of my violin part there. My knee didn't shake so bad but I still missed a few notes and had to improvise. I am sorry for the boring details about each time I play the violin; I am writing that mainly for myself. I want to be able to look back through this Blog and track my progress.