Mooritzzz in Canada: Dezember 2008

Hey folks, how are you doing? I'm fine here in our white envrionment.Yes, you're reading correctly. Finally we have some snow also in the village. It snowed 50 cm in the last couple of days and the weather forecast promises more snow for the next days. Therefore now the season of snowbattles outside and building snowmen started definitely.. :-)
After i had my "shadow day" i could finally start to work last Monday. I had one lession in the afternoon. A private lesson for a father with his son and daugther. It was funny even if the kids were a bit tired after a 5-hour-flight from somewhere in the U.S. The next day i was on "stand-by" which means that you have to show up i the morning to see if there's a lesson for you. Unfortunately there wasn't any. On the 24. they called me off because there is just not enough work around. Normally this period of year is high season and there are so many lessons booked that everybody has to work all day. This year is kind of *****. Not a lot of snow, the world financial crisis and also this accident with the gondola. But what can one do except of keep being an optimist.. :-)
Today i could work again. First i had a lesson like my first one. A father with his two kids from the States. They were pretty good riders so we could actually go up on the mountains and hit some powder. Or at least we tried.. :-) After the lesson which brought me nice tip and a delicous caesar chicken salad i was booked for a beginner lesson. 3 adults and one kid who had never been on a snowboard before. So i started to explain what a snowboard is, where the nose and the tail is and how you attach it on your feet. Really funny.. :-) After 3 hours they were experts in sideslipping and doing pendulum due to me and all seemed very happy.
Tomorrow i'm booked again for some lessons. Let's see how they're going to be..

I hoped you had all nice Christmas. I was not really in a Christmas atmosphere even though we had a real Christmas tree a some chain of lights. On the 24. we went alltogether to the other student house and had a big dinner there. We were aproximately 25 people and everybody brought some food. In the end there was a multicultural dinner with food from Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, USA, Australia and Korea. It was so good that i ate too much and was knocked out for an hour before i could move again and eat the dessert.. :-)
The next day we hunted some powder and sometimes also some rocks and chilled it in the evening. That's how my Christmas looked like. Now i'm enjoying the last days of 2008 and looking forward to the New Year's party! Underneath some pictures from the last days:

"Blue trees in the village"

Our neighbour's house

Christmas dinner

On the hill

Hi guys, i know it's a long time since my last post. It was a busy time and finally i found some time to keep you up-to-date.
The most important thing during the last couple of days is that i got a job!! :-) I'm hired as a part-time snowboard instructor and will work two days a week. But if i act in a nice behaviour and do my work well i can get more work. At least i hope this. Also i got a season pass for the mountains which is great! And I can't tell how relieved i was after signing the contract...
Since then a lot of other things happened: Today i had my last training day from the snowboard school. Alltogether there are 3 training days outside on the hill and two information days inside. It was really funny too meet other instructors and get to know the Canadian way of teaching. Now i'm quite prepared and after my "shadow day" next Wednesday, which means that i'm going to join another instructor with his class for one day, i'm ready to work. Christmas is on the way and hopefully a lot of people. (and more snow) At the moment we have just 60 cm. Thus not a lot of runs are open and it's so crowded that it's not a big surprise if you hit someone.
Since yesterday however the people rather stay in their hotel because the temperature felt to -12 in the village and -24 on the mountain. It's just sick!! Yesterday i my nose went so white and that i almost lost it.. It was ******* cold! I've learned from my mistakes and wore two pair of gloves and 5 layers. In all those clothes i couldn't really move and i felt like a beginner who's trying to make his first turn. The next days those arctic conditions will last so i definitely have to buy a face mask or maybe a gangster-bandana?

Since the 29th of novembre i'm now living in a student house with other work-and-study students. I really enjoyed the last week with my homestay family. Two days before i left we celebrated American Thanksgiving because the homestay mother grew up in Philadelphia. She invited a whole bunch of neighbours and with them all their kids. Finally we were about 16 people, 5 kids in the age of 2 among us. You can imagine what kind of "tohuwabohu" it was.. :-) Kids playing there, kids crying here and so on. The meal however was so delicous that i don't know what word in english could describe it. A huge turkey with gravy, risotto, vegetables, cranberry jelly, and a lot of other nice food. I ate so much that i could hardly move after.. :-)

In our new home it's very comfortable. It's a two-storey house i an area about 10-bus-minutes outside of Whistler. There are 7 bedrooms for two people each. I'm living downstairs with 3 other Suisse, one girl from Liechtenstein and a guy from Germany. We try to speak english together and we are quite succesfull. As soon as i have some pictures from our nice view i'll let you be part of it. The price we pay (german expression translated into english.. ) for the view is a 10 minute hike from the busstop and a lot of sweat from carrying the food to our house.
Unfortunately we're all not the best cooks and therefore we survived the first week with pasta. Now we really try to cook various food and i can improve my cooking skills as well as my english skills. :-)
We are in the middle of decembre and thus on the way to christmas. Yesterday we bought a christmas-tree. A real one, not a fake one which you can see very often here in North America. But there is still a lot to do to bring some christmas feelings in our house.
There's is still a lack of snow here in Whistler which makes it hard to keep being a optimist. Everybody is waiting for a big big dump of snow! :-)
Today i had no training and could go snowboarding for me. Unfortunately it was a really bad day. First i nearly broke my snowboard.. Too much jibbing and a stupid ice patch were too much for my old snowboard. I couldn't stick my pop 360, landed directely on the ice and a part of my nose popped off.. It was not big surprise. It was just a matter of time that something like this would happen to my old "senior" board. I'll go to a shop tomorrow and maybe a little bit of glue with extend the lifetime for a couple days or should i say runs?
The other bad thing today is actually pretty scary. After just a week of the opening of the Peak-to-Peak gondola which connects the two mountains and sets a world record for the longest gondola (!) a gondola from the village had a serious accident. One tower broke into two pieces and a few cabins almost fell down. Nobody got seriously hurt but it's really not good for the image of Whistler. If you're interested to read more here is the link: http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20081216/BC_blackcomb_gondola_081216/20081216?hub=BritishColumbia
Because of that this part of the ski resort was closed so everybody had to go to the other part with the peak-to-peak and then download on this side to the village. You can imagine how many people were waiting to go down. A huge line-up on the top and one at the mid-station. Crazy.
The time we got down there was no time to go back so we stayed in the village, went a little bit apres-skiing and the moved directly to school.
Now i'm sitting on the couch, trying to keep my eyes open and looking forward to my "shadow" day.
Enjoy the pictures beyond and soon i'll put some more on my blog! Peace out, greets.