Learning to Snowboard (March 2011)

A school trip to Switzerland is organized every year for those who wish to learn how to ski or snowboard. The trip is hosted at Les Elfes in Verbier, Switzerland. I chose to learn  how to snowboard, it was my first time snowboarding and the first time I had been in snow for 8 years. The trip was 1 week long and we snowboarded about 6 hours a day for 6 days, it was great fun. On the first 2 days, we learnt basic skills and just got used to being on the board and on the snow. We remained on the small practice slopes to learn the fundamental techniques of snowboarding. The rest of the days we moved up to the mountain and went down bigger slopes everyday. We learned more advanced techniques to better control the snowboard by our instructor Kevin. He was a very good teacher by having fun with us, which was easy because we were a tight-nit small group, so socially it was fun, as well as actively. On the later days we tried the black slopes, which are the steepest slopes, we managed to ride them well. By the end of the course I had progressed from a level 0, to a level 3. When we were not on the slopes we were doing other activities like ice-skating or swimming. If we were not doing those activities we were out in the town of Verbier shopping or enjoying the food.
My goals for the trip were to have fun, and learn the basics of snowboarding so I can build on my skills. I feel like my instructor made this easy for me, because by the end of the course I became a confident, capable and competent snowboarder. Throughout the course, it was necessary to interact with my peers in my group, we helped each other to learn and develop as snowboarders because we were learning together at the same rate. It was also important to interact with the younger students on the ski trip, I was one of the oldest ISK students on the trip, so the younger students looked up to me as an example for good behaviour etc. They also helped me develop leadership skills with the responsibilities of being an older student.
Overall, the trip was great fun and I was highly involved actively, at the beginning I fell a lot, and injured my shoulder that I had to have an x-ray, I missed the last hour of boarding, which was time for 1 final run. It did not matter too much because I had an amazing experience and got to have an early shower.