JW in NZ

I've really been enjoying the training that I've been doing and have learnt loads skiing (but not grammar). I've been training with the appropriately named Ski Instructor Training Co. and it is run entirely by examiners. I think it's just been good to get so much accurate feedback (it can seem a bit negative at times, but they just claim that they're being honest!).

One large part of the assessment coming up is skier analysis - I'll watch some videos of people skiing and am required to highlight their faults/plan a lesson for them. Am feeling reasonably confident about this since I've done quite a bit of training both with evening video sessions, and also in my spare time I've often parked myself on a ledge overlooking a beginner run and just sat people-watching for ages. Never could have guessed how entertaining it is! Some of the stuff you see happening on these runs is just priceless.

More depressing people watching exercises are the video analysis sessions of our own skiing, but at least it's nice to have seen myself ski for the first time.

The trainers are all very friendly and have introduced a whole new vocabulary to me. I know I'm going to refer to 'parallelity' when explaining skiing to someone and it won't help. There's a decent amount of banter around the groups which is nice. There's both a teacher from Tile Hill on the course and a guy, Richard, thats just finished uni and has gone about this whole thing in exactly the same way as me; I'm not the only disorganised person on the planet!

Took my £60 skis in to the place up on the mountain to have them edged/waxed a few days back at about the time of the last lift. I asked if I could pick them up in the morning, which is quite normal and he said he'd check and went over to a colleague. I should have left at that point. When he came back he said it "should" be ok, and asked when I wanted to collect them:
JW: "er, tomorrow morning."
Idiot employee: "what time?"
JW: "probably around 9 or half past"
Employee: "well which is it?"
JW: "should be between 9 and 9:30"
Employee: "I need to know when exactly it'll be"
JW: "do you want me to be specific?"
When he realised I'd made him sound pathetic he backed down a bit. Surely 95% of his clients must be on holiday; it's just not the business where people get so anal about timing. I should have told him not to bother.

Was someones 18th birthday yesterday and since it was the last chance to go out before the exam is over pretty much everyone on the course got involved. It really took me back to my first year at uni. Didn't drink too much (unlike some people), split up to play pool (badly) with Richard for a while, and generally had a pretty good evening.

In spirit of something going wrong on the first day of a ski exam, I'm (not very) pleased to say that this one wasn't my fault. Due to high winds, both ski areas were closed today so we had an indoor teaching session instead in local secondary school (strange being at school!). The weather turned for the worse through the day and we had half a day of very heavy rain. I drove up to Coronet Peak to collect my boots in case we ski at The Remarkables tomorrow and it was a sad sight. The rain has destroyed most of the snow! Not convinced it will be opening again but we'll see. Am just worried about my exam; it's presumably not going to happen if there's no snow and everyones jobs are dependent on passing this exam.