18th of Jaunary from Zell am See

The previous week has been very fun and interesting! 75 % of the lessons have been on snowboard, so I might demand a green uniform!

Friday the 13^th is always a lucky date and this was no exception. I had an amazing ski training, starting off with carving and short turns. Later on as the others had to leave for work, at the end it was just three of us hitting off-piste and moguls! Off-piste is still a mental challenge, but I really love moguls now! Although it was an exhausting morning, that was the best day of skiing in the season so far! Thanks to our amazing instructor Anthony!

Friends from Latvia drove over and brought a package from our Mom. Some good Latvian food & beer, yummmiiiiiii!

Sunday was a fun day, had a friend from Kaprun visiting, so we hit Sonnenalm slopes with our snowboards. Tried out the Ski-Movie, although on snowboards, haha! Right after that took the T-bar with 53% steepness. That was the hardest lift I’ve taken in a long while! We nearly rolled down in the powder snow just getting started on it, haha! The red uniform gave a motivation to hold on, but I for sure know which lift is crossed out of the map now. Still have a bruise on my leg! :D And Liva had a great laugh, because she was going behind us and on skis. Ha-ha-ha.

A perfect noon to ride for ourselves!

A cold wave had stopped by, one morning the car termometer said it's -18 C. No wonder it felt chilly outside! :D

 

 

The car used to be blue, but someone re-coloured it!

 The next afternoon went to visit Blizzard ski factory in Mitersill. That sure gave a lot of insight! A lot of the work is done by machines, but even more is actually hard work. And the costs of the machines are insane, now I can understand why the ski costs that money and no less. Did you know that some skis have up to 100 layers of different materials? Having this insight of how stuff works was really cool and definitely going to be useful!

Yesterday and today had very cool guests snowboarding, quick progress and at the end of the lesson both got confused and struggled to remember which one is their front foot, haha! And also both days have been in English, which made the whole thing super easy!

For tomorrow morning have a complete beginner snowboarding, so let’s see how that turns out. Too bad that the weather is getting bad again, I would sure enjoy more of these sunny days! Hopefully it’s going to be some fresh powder and not rain as some forecasts say.

Fresh snow and sun, can it get better?

Come visit Zell am See/ Kaprun!

Greetings,

Lauma

11th of January from Zell am See

I can’t believe it yet, but it stopped snowing! The sun was out bright today for the first time in a long while. 

 These few days have been very challenging and examining. Difficult students to work with and two emergency calls within the last three working days. Hopefully there won’t be any in the future, thank you, that’s been enough.

Yesterday went out to Diesel Kino, watched Carnage. A good movie, although serious, some of the phrases were hilarious. After that our little company agreed to have a drink in B17 which also turned out to be a very nice place. We nearly agreed to sing karaoke, but couldn’t choose the song, so left that for the next time, haha!

Let’s see what tomorrow brings, hopefully it will go good.

Zeeee Russian speaking instructors

Cheers,

Lauma

7th of January from Zell am See

It’s been snowing impressive the last two days! The snow piles in front yard are nearly over my height, the slopes are amazing soft. The funniest thing today was doing turns on a narrow slope down from Cafe back to slope and on the side the powder snow looked exactly the same as the packed one. Within 0.1 seconds my skis disappeared under the snow and I found myself lying head downhill and hopelessly trying to figure out what happened!

When the day seemed to be never ending it all changed up in the meeting point, so I worked with a very frightened woman in the beginning (thanks to her two amazing friends who inspired her by telling how they broke their leg and hip when skiing). However, as the day continued we increased the speed so it started to look like skiing. I was very satisfied with how she worked and she loved my company, so we’ll continue tomorrow. :)

The day before yesterday went to Saalbach with my three amazing black-piste kids. Had an awesome time doing exercises all day long, what they loved the best was the price for being so awesome on skis, we just took them off and went to have fun in the deep snow! They wouldn’t care that it took like 10 minutes each to get the skis back on, haha! So I got invited to their house for Russian Christmas, first in my life. They had put enormous effort to make a concert, three kids took our attention for at least 20 minutes telling and showing a fairy tale.

The only thing I don’t like is the fact I’ve caught a bad cold and bit of fever too.  Don’t feel it when skiing, because there’s so much else to think of, but once off the skis and have to carry them around feels like they’re going to take me down to ground. Other that the fever and being misjudged as hangover it’s going good! Day after tomorrow is for sure a holiday, maybe that’s going to get me back on feet properly.

Warm and soft greetings from snowy Zell am See,

Lauma

3rd of January from Zell am See

I’ve had amazing time on and off the mountain! About 80% of my lessons have been in Russian so been speaking the language every day for nearly two weeks. What surprised me the most, I’ve been asked twice now by native Russians if I come from Russia. I guess my accent isn’t too bad. Also had a couple of lessons in English and one in French; that was my favourite! 

On Christmas evening I baked an apple pie, so we had a delicious treat before sleep. A few days later received a package from home, full with Latvian sweets, om nom nom! Went down town on the December 30 with some friends from Anwaerter course, had a great time there. As we continue working, on Silvester night I only made the room tidy and went to bed to wake up in the next year. I really needed that sleep; it’s actually amazing how good my body is trained now to wake up early. I wish I had this discipline while I was in school, haha! 

This paragraph is for native Latvians: my sister was checking the weather forecast and I asked: “Ko tam saka?” To which she replied: “Nezinu, pasmatries pati!” A nice conversation in Ratvian we had there. :D

The last two days had a private lesson with a 6 year old Russian girl. It was her first time in the mountains, but we had such an amazing time! She was very talented and amazingly clever. We even discussed other skiers while on the chairlift; she noticed the differences in techniques. And as I was saying that this or that is wrong she figured out why all by herself. Unfortunately as the season is on its peak there was no way I could continue skiing with her, the next days were already booked for me in December.

Now I’m having lessons with 4 kids aged 7 to 12, all have been skiing very long comparing to their own life time. Was going on red slopes in a polite speed and they kept following. We went over to a black run, did it half way down and as we stopped I answered the question that ‘Yes, it is a black run’ they would say ‘Oh, I thought it was red!’ So we even did some exercises and they still kept following me really close by. Will be having them for a couple more days, looking forward to it! 

The winter is surely flying by quickly, chasing it to enjoy as much as possible! 

Take care,

Lauma