New year....new beginnings!

I always felt (and still feel) that the greatest thing about a new year that has just started is that feeling of having your future, at least your coming year, as an empty book in front of you and it's absolutely exclusively yours to write!

My year ended, like always, with bubbles, pink to be precise and it definitely started with a new beginning = "My skiing career" ;) You see, I have been the Paradox, "the thing that cannot be", namely a Swede, living in Switzerland who has never ever tried downhill skiing.
 
How did it go? Well.....to give you some background to what you are about to read, this was actually my second time in the mountains for "downhilling". 
When I was around 19 years old, some "friends" of mine wanted to take me snowboarding for the first time. After 1-2 hours of practising, I could stand on the board and almost turn.... ALMOST. They then thought it was a fun joke to take me up the mountain with the lift (in which I fell and hurt myself quite bad) and dropped me off at a black slope, claiming it was for kids, where the only way down was...well......snowboarding. It was quite a traumatic experience and I had to throw myself several times on the way down to stop the board as I kept gaining speed, being unable to turn!! To this very day, I feel happy to have survived it as I literally thought I was going to die.

....well anyway, back to skiing....mainly in pictures.

1. All geared up! Feeling optimistic........and actually quite nervous.

 2. Me and the other 5-10 year old kids are practising "Snow ploughing" in the little kids slope

3. Feeling a little bit like Rocky, ready to take on new adventures! Suggested we head to the next level, aka a real slope, I mean, how hard can it be??

 4. Took the T-lift up......fell out of it and hurt my knee, after having skied over one of Chris's skis. That Rocky feeling changed into panic mode, the smug facial expression of mine was replaced with tears and my legs were shaking and felt like spaghetti....and let's just say it didn't feel any better when I came here........

5. This below view greets me (and I'm not talking about the lovely, snowy hills....just the steep way down), and the inevitable question pops into my mind: "What the "Fudge" does people like about this sport?!". Ploughing for 2 hours is haaaaard work, especially with those incredibly uncomfortable shoes, wearing plenty of clothes and sweating in them, while freezing in my face, feeling completely out of control, fearing for my life AND the life of others.....

 6. Luckily, I survived this slope even with spaghetti legs.....and I then went again......and again......and all of a sudden, I felt the sun warming my cheeks, fresh air in my lungs, I started to pay attention to the INCREDIBLY beautiful surroundings and I before I knew it, I did some parallel turns.....I think....

7. All in all, it was a fantastic experience and I will surely go again, but one thing is for sure: Skiing for the first time at the age of 21, oh eerhhmm sorry I mean 31, is not entirely a piece of cake! Especially not when fear is involved... You could say I started out not entirely unlike Bridget Jones in one of my favourite scenes/clips:

8. ...but 2 x panic attacks and 1 x ridiculous lift-falls later, I was happy and a lot more confident and back to a more Rocky type of feeling!

xox