Had two amazing weeks of winter up on the Kitzsteinhorn glacier in Austria. I was doing the first part of my Landesschilehrer. (LS1).
To explain you shortly there are 3 levels of ski instructors in Austria: the Anwaerter (beginner, peace of cake), Landesschilehrer (part 1, part 2 with snowboard and Alpine course. A little more tricky, but still achievable) and Staatlichen where you need to be a really good skier overall, don't know much about the criteria myself yet, but I believe with hard work and training it would be possible sometime in the future.
So back to how did LS1 go. The course started with 3 days of snowboarding. Me and my sister signed up in the Pro's. As everyone could get down the slope in a fast manner we were really quick on the theory and teaching parts and did some fun riding for ourselves. That was really good since it was the first day back on the snow after a 7 month break. We got cut off on our second day due to storms so only had two days of snowboarding. Going through the 'how to teach park' section was really fun as I haven't been doing it much myself.
As this is only an intro there are no tests for the snowboarding at this part so it's no problem if you've never even been on a board, the full snowboarding course with exams comes on the LS 2 so you have plenty of time to train for it.
Thanks to our cool snowboard instructor Ernst, the two days we had on the mountain were super fun, same as last year where we had our whole Anwaerter course with him. Good riding put together with all the teaching and technique program, great laugh over the lunch breaks!
Next day we started off with freestyle skiing, now with 41 people in the course we split into four sections to learn all the freestyle and kids part. First day on skis now after a 7 month break and it's a new pair of twin-tips I've never skied on. Off we go. Started with how to teach kids parallel skiing, then into slope style, then some technique and park section. First time trying the boxes with skis, lots of fun. Knowing I'd want to try the side-slide I put on my protector pants and good I did because turning the skis sideways automatically made me do the alpine basic position. Which does NOT work on the boxes, haha! Slipped out immediately, but didn't matter since I had the protector on!
Of course it wouldn't have been me if I said no to 'should we do the intermediate' jumps? Still first day on skis, but I was up for it! First jump did good, on the second one was missing a bit of speed, so didn't really get over to the sweet landing spot. Anyway, lots of fun!
From the next days I lost count what we did each single day, but overall it was a lot of moguls, short turns and carving turns. Being in the top group with Klaus was really hard in the beginning for mainly two reasons. First, as we were only 3 non-native German speakers out of 11 he was talking very fast Austrian German and second I didn't have the feeling that I have full control over the skis.
Those two combined, the first days were a war between us. From aprrox. day 3 it got better, either I started understanding the dialect or he slowed down or both combined, haha! Also skiing started to go better, so the next days turned into very productive skiing.
As I wanted to get the maximum out of myself in this course I was never satisfied when I heard 'that was ok'. I wanted to know what to do to hear 'that was good'. So I knew it was ok most of the time, but I was pushing myself really hard to get it good. And for that I really appreaciate the way Klaus was working, because he fixed everything step by step, starting with the most important and then to details, so it also made perfect sense for me.
I remember the first two days I was also flying out of the mogul course all the time! I was so frustrated, because I had never done the man made zipper line, I was always doing a wide slope with hundreds of moguls that I could pick from. Here I only had one way down and I had a problem with that. I was so happy when I finally got all the way down in one go! From there on it improved rapidly!
Quickly going through all the teaching 'how to' and back to skiing, I loved that! Theory lessons in the evening was a good German training along with studying some of my Anatomy course I had taken with me.
Now to the exam part. The theory was available on both German and English, although same as last course, the English translation made so little sense I stayed with German. With that passed, next on was teaching, where I got my topic 'children snowplough to parallel skiing over jumping'. Quite easy since it was a topic I had done in real life already. Managed it through in German well (so I think, haha!), then a few questions to get my English grade too.
Only skiing left now. Started to feel the pressure. I knew I would pass, but I wanted to do my best. My goal was to get an overall 2 (The Austrian system, where 1 is the best through 4 is passed and 5 is failed). So as I did my warm up run on the moguls I could feel that some of them were really sharp, so had to be careful in the middle. I skied a little more careful than I usually would as flying out would for sure be worse. So made through the whole course in a nice zipper line, absorbing every single mogul, I felt so relieved when through the course!
Next on was short turns. A little worried about those too, because hadn't been able to get the rhythm fast enough. Technically good, but slow. Listened to one of my favourite songs on my iPod and off I went. Held the speed OK, but I felt I wasn't steering the skis all the way through, the thing I could only do when going slower. Happy anyway!
Now off to carving turns. Christian (another instructor) made me laugh when he said 'whoever thinks he's positive on the first two can go home!' That obviously made me relax and as I pushed off for my start it helped me to put everything I learnt over the week together in one run. That along with the perfect slope and steepness gave me a feeling I really did my best there!
Done! Now we went up to the moguls once more to film them, but I was so relaxed and unfocused I couldn't even finish the course! So we decided to go down and wait for the results.
Sitting in the classroom and hearing my name. Georg (the boss:) goes 'zwoa eins eins, wo ist die Lauma?' Beating my goal I managed to get an overall 1 in skiing! My eyes were probably the size of a golf ball for a second! I couldn't believe I got the best score and the best of the course! It felt so surreal! For sure a motivation to get through the part 2 quicker.
A big shout out and thanks to everyone there for the great time and experience! Ernst for snowboarding, Klaus for skiing, my group for helping me whenever the German part was too fast, Jordy for lending us his car, Lukas for taking pictures and many more!
Now doing my Uni stuff that I've missed, working as a waitress, training in acrobatics and planning my winter season!
Keep in touch!
~LI
