Ski Marathon

I skied 28k last weekend. It was awesome, we spend the whole weekend out, traveling all day Saturday and then skiing a little and lazing about. We went to dinner in a great restaurant that had such good food (or maybe it was just that it wasn't mensa. hmmm...) Anyway, we loved it.
And when we got back, we had the greatest hour+ long snowball fight. It was perfect conditions - snowing, so we had a constant supply, and the snow was the perfect consistency, and we had 3 vans to run around and hide behind and ambush people from. And great snowbanks to throw people in and bury them in snow. The equatorial people were pretty good at it too, considering they hadn't ever seen snow before this year. We were all soaked when it was done.
And the next day we went skiing. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful track and we were dead last. We watched as everyone sped ahead, and then plodded on ourselves. We had so much fun, Leah (my co-year), Marta (polish rooma, you should know that by now), Renato (Guatemala), Eduardo (Peru) and I laughed and discussed the meaning of life and the existence of love and our aching legs.
We came in dead last, half an hour after the gates had supposedly closed. But hey, who cares? We're not competitive. We would have been second to last, but Assumpta (Uganda), Tara(Sri Lanka) and Vanessa (Singapore) cheated. Grr. They skipped a 4k loop and then got a ride for the last 10k in someone's car. I guess that's good, and they're happy, but it makes us look worse, being the absolute last people through the gate. We're still happy though, see?













All in all, it was a great way to end the ski season.

Valentines day

Ok, so this is a little late, but I figured y'all would like to hear about my Valentines day.
It was really fun - I dressed all in pink, make-up and everything, and put my hair in a semi-ponytail. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture, though I meant to. sigh.
In TOK (Theory of Knowledge - a cool class about critical thinking and perception, etc) I convinced the teacher to let us discuss love ("what is love?" as my co-year puts it) and marriage instead of Reason, as was scheduled (reason, can you imagine? On Valentines day? Eru's song.)
I baked cookies with sweethearts in them for all my friends and spent the evening distributing them, which was great fun. I gave roses to my closest friends as well and little notes saying, "Roses are pink (they were), Violets are blue, Cookies are sweet and so are you!"
And I got some sweet Valentines in return: One of the classic American mini-cards from Nik, my co-year saying "hope this helps you reminisce about the good ol' days of 2nd grade!" (us Americans are cool - I made cookies etc. And he gave a bundle of roses to his girlfriend, who was mighty pleased) A little blue heart from Renato (he's from Guatemala) and a pop-out blue heart-card from Nidhi (India)
And the Latinos gave every girl in the school a (uniquely composed for her) love poem (and there are a lot of them). So cool, so Latino... Mine was:

Little Princess from the sky,
Your magic smile
Brings every day happiness
To every place in my soul.

You should know, my little princess,
That you are not just pretty,
Because when I see you and listen to you,
I could die for you.

Isn't that sweet??? I love Latinos.
And Rene (one of the Latinos who wrote the poems, I think - they never would tell) gave me a red rose. ;)
So, all around, a good day.

Skiing

So I did get snow after all.
I joined the x-country skiing activity and am having a blast. It's so funny to see all these equatorial people trying to ski... It makes me feel much better about my moderate ability. And now that they've had 3 times to practice, they're really good and we have a lot of fun.
(That would be Assumpta(Uganda), me, Giulia (rooma/Italy), Domenica(cecz republic, Vivian(Hong Kong), and Marta (other rooma/Poland))
I'm on skate skis, but I switch with lots of people because they see me and others speeding along and want to try. And while I have classic skis, I go off into the woods and do a little trekking, it's awesome.

Last Saturday I went 20ish kilometers, and ended up 45 minutes late for the ride back because I was going with Assumpta, Renato and Edurardo and we took a wrong turn and went on the long loop, not the short one. Oh well, it was fun, and they didn't leave without us, so that's good.
And now it's gorgeous and sunny and 60-65° and we're out on the grass basking in the sun. Sigh, it's a hard life, y'know?