Ski Week

Ski Week, or "friluftsliveke" (in Norwegian), is a one-week trip organized by my school that all first year students participate in. We travel to a ski lodge north of my school and spend the week learning how to ski in groups of about 15 students. We learn how to cross-country ski and downhill ski. We also help out at the lodge by cooking dinner and cleaning and spend a lot of time bonding together over hot chocolate.

Ski Week was interesting for me as I had never skied before. Also, it was a rare chance for me to be physically active. Skiing was something that I was afraid of; I had had the opportunity to ski before but had never wanted to for fear of falling or hurting myself. However, on Ski Week, I was forced to overcome my fear and strap on some skis.

It helped that I was surrounded by many people who had never skied before. Some of the people in my group had never even seen snow before they came to Norway! The first two days on skis were painful but fun. We all fell down a lot in the snow and ended up bruised and sore, but we still managed to keep our spirits up and laugh about the whole thing. The last few days, as I became more confident on skis, I decided to also attempt snowboarding on the downhill slopes. I had never imagined that after only a week, I would be so adventurous! Snowboarding proved even more difficult than skiing but I'm so happy that I got a chance to try it out anyway.

From Ski Week I learned that sometimes, you simply must take chances. I was so scared of skiing before and now it seems like a silly thing to be scared of. I overcame my fear of skiing and ended up really enjoying myself, which proved to me that I cannot always be so cautious if I really want to enjoy life. I also learned a lot about collective thinking, because when you are on skis out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by snow, you must be sure to think of everyone else in your group to make sure that no one gets lost. We all had to take care of each other a lot and it was important for me to spend a week depending on others but also helping others.