Skiing in Paradise, Part One: A Shaky, but Optimistic, Beginning

While we were bumming around Gwangju in January, we went up to Muju with some of our friends for a weekend of skiing. We were a mix of ski levels: some (like our friend from New Hampshire and the tall gyopo brothers) were well seasoned, Joel and I were intermediate skiiers, and a couple were beginners. Our Saffa host had never been on a pair of skis in his life but decided to just wing it and hope for the best, reasoning that his surfing experience would help him with his sense of balance (or something). Always ready with a sexist joke to get under my skin, he made some quip about all women essentially being snow bunnies, resulting in me verbally assaulting him into embarrassment.

Little did I know that I would soon regress into snow bunny status less than two months later.

As a Texas woman (and the child of a Brazilian woman who generally hates travel) and someone who generally spurns "rich sports," I never dreamed that I would stand on a pair of skis until Joel insisted that it was the greatest thing ever and I must try it. He learned during his study abroad in Italy in 2006, when his whimsical Italian professor decided that taking three days off from class to ski was a good idea. Joel raved about how fun it was to ski and how amazing the resort was, so we first went to Croce Bianca in Canazei in the winter of 2012. We scheduled lessons with an instructor at one of the local ski schools, a cheerful Italian man who couldn't quite get Joel's name right (he called him "John" until the very end) but insisted that all we needed to become expert skiiers was to "gain the confidence." He was also highly amused at how I would giggle like a five-year-old every time I lost my balance and wiped out. "One hundred points!" he would shout in that delightful Italian accent.

The hotel.

Joel's vision of paradise: forested, snow-covered mountains.

After learning that winter in the Dolomites, we skied twice more in Korea, which I now realize has much shorter and easier slopes than here in Italy. At any rate, I was able to practice my technique and, of course, gain the confidence, eventually braving some of the more challenging (read: scarier) intermediate slopes. Generally speaking, I have always had an edge on Joel (probably just because I am more active and flexible), but he tried the advanced slopes at Muju a couple of times, so we were super pumped to get our ski on in Italy. We decided that after a few days of warming up on the some of the more familiar slopes, we attempt to ski the whole Sella Ronda in one day.

Our favorite hotel is a four-star resort in the quaint alpine village of Canazei, which is nestled in a valley called Val di Fassa. It is a veritable mountain paradise, with cedar paneling inside the rooms, a fabulous spa, and an amazing restaurant with the world's most charismatic Maître D', Alberto. It is by no means cheap, but Joel knew as soon as we began our teaching contracts that he wanted to spend part of the post-contract vacation here, so we booked five nights in the hotel and planned for four days of skiing. We checked in with no problems and congratulated ourselves at arriving despite the myriad difficulties discussed in my last blog post. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.

Day One, Saturday: Warm-Up on Belvedere
Our first day went really well. Belvedere is a nice area with lots of gentle slopes, so after a few minutes of pizza turns (as I remembered how to stand on my skis), I had a great first day. Joel was a little stiffer, but eventually he loosened up and we had a great couple of longer runs after lunch, despite the fact that the lower slopes pretty much turn into slushees around 2 p.m. this late in the season. We called it a day at about that time and hit Croce Bianca's glorious spa around 3. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.

Day Two, Sunday: A Shaky Start on Ciampac and a Sprained Thumb
Flashback to 2012: The day after we had our ski lessons, we went to an area called Ciampac (pronounced cham-pack) to practice what we'd learned. The lift up the main slope stops in two places: first about halfway up the slope, then at the top. The first stop only lasts for a few seconds, though, so if you miss it, you have to go up to the top and ski down. As you might have guessed, we missed that stop during one of our runs and had to go all the way up...and then chickened out at the top, which meant we had to ride the chair lift down.

Naturally, that image, burned into my memory, bubbled straight to the surface when Joel told me we were headed to Ciampac on Saturday and were going to start the day going down from the top of the lift. I begged him to let me do my first one from halfway up, but then (just like in 2012) I missed my chance to get off the lift and found myself, insides roiling, at the top of the slope. I eyed the way down in terror as skiers and boarders swept past me on either side, trying to screw up my nerve long after Joel began his descent.

This would become a recurring theme throughout the rest of the trip.

On the first run down, I fell four times, twice losing my skis and once bending my thumb so far backwards that the pain (and the frustration) drove me to tears. I somehow made it down and yelled some things I don't remember at Joel, probably something about not listening to me or letting me start off slowly or something. The morning got better after I did the run a couple more times, twice from the halfway point and once more from the top (with no trouble the second time), so we grabbed lunch and decided to take a different route back in the afternoon.

After lunch, I fell again (in the slush this time) and bent the same thumb backwards again. It was painful, but I don't really need my thumb for skiing (besides my deathlike grip on my poles), so I still finished out the day okay. Yay for my first legitimate ski injury, or something. We got back to the hotel and discussed plans to complete the Sella Ronda circuit the next day. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.

Little did I know what lay in store for me.