A day on the slopes

This past weekend, 26 students from around the world joined FIUTS for a Snow Day at Stevens Pass.

Guest Post by FIUTS Facilitator Yili (Jacky) Chen

Learning how to do snowboarding. Photo credit: Viviana Wei

Although I have been in Seattle for several years, I never had a chance to go to do some snow sport like skiing or snowboarding. On March 1st, FIUTS had a Snow Day event to Stevens Pass, and fortunately I finally had an opportunity to hit the slopes!

My first time skiing. Photo credit: Viviana Wei

Our group consisted of 26 people from all over the world. We had people from the US, Saudi Arabia, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium. We left the campus to Stevens Pass at around 7 in the morning and got there around 9 am, thus we had plenty of time to get our gear ready. Then everyone just went on and enjoyed their snow day with snowboarding and skiing.

Since some students and I had no skiing experience, we had a skiing class for beginners together. We were taught how to walk up the slope, the way to keep balance and how to turn. It did take a lot of practice to find the proper way to ski, I fell down many times, but it’s not painful and it’s even kind of fun for me. Everyone had a great day on slope.

It snowed for most of the time that day and so cold, but doing sports definitely made us warm and excited. This is a nice first time skiing experience for me. Life is all about experiencing different kinds of things, exploring the field that you've never known, isn't it?