Finland Outdoors Part 3: Snowboarding 101

Wow, so many events to blog about this week. I had a snowboarding lesson on Thursday, which seemed to have so much promise that I skipped one of my classes to attend it. It ended up being a quite mediocre event. It was a special free lesson (plus 5 euro rental) set up for the international students with no snow in their home countries (ha ha, suckers!)

But the lesson was only one hour long. There was hardly any time to learn anything. After this, the 10 instructors announced they were leaving. They left 35 promising members of tomorrow’s work force to dangerously fend for themselves on the bunny hill’s icy and intimidating incline.

Chaos pursued. People were crashing left and right. Others preferred to practice one of snowboarding’s more irritating techniques by sitting down in the middle of the hill, perched in a way that could only mean certain doom for anyone heading their way. ‘Ow’s’, ‘ouch’s’ and ‘damn-it’s’ (in various languages) could be heard all the way down the hill. That being said, I don’t think I will be trading in my skis for a snowboard anytime soon. There is just too much time spent falling on your ass and recovering from your fall on your ass.

Me catching some serious air-time