スキー好き!

A number of factors have aligned to make it very difficult for me to watch the Olympics:

1. I don’t have a TV at home—at least not one with any reception, despite the fact that I live two blocks from the TV station.
2. Streaming nbcolympics.com is unavailable outside the U.S.
3. The vice principal holds the remote for the teachers’ room TV, and when he’s nice enough to turn the TV on, he watches only the Japanese athletes and turns it off when others are competing; women’s figure skating was on yesterday morning, and we watched the three Japanese competitors and no one else.

So then, for a little Olympic action, four of us who hail from the Third Coast hopped a train for the Japanese Alps, to reenact the 1998 Winter Games. When you’ve only skied in the Midwest, sure, you can say you can ski…in the Midwest. Davin and Jackson have been to the Rockies, so they were up to their usual badassery on snowboard and skis, respectively. To me, Nagano's intermediate runs were borderline horrific. Nevertheless, the slopes were powdery-perfect and the whole sweeping mountain scene was gorgeous. We zigzagged the Hakuba Goryu and Hakuba 47 resorts and I graced my fellow skiers with only one major fall…but I didn’t even lose my skis or anything, plus the snowboarder who cut me off even stopped to apologize for my snow-dive, which means it was all his fault, right?The rest of the weekend, we frolicked in the snowy woods—less familiar to us these days than ever before, basked in the kerosene heat of our little loft cabin, and checked out a few après-ski watering holes for darts, drinks, chimichangas, nabe (Japanese hotpot), and even a little Connect Four. Had I not been such a snot-fountain, I would have done it up right on Saturday night at the Tracks Bar fluorescent skiwear party, but alas…I settled for snuggling into the cabin’s bean bag chairs to watch Pump Up the Volume. Don’t judge me, Internet.
In other news, as I grow increasingly sad about this school year coming to a close, I am distracting myself with plans to visit Cambodia and Vietnam for the second half of March. My Vietnamese visa arrived in the mail yesterday, flights are booked straight from Shizuoka (on Mt. Fuji Dream Airlines, whose planes are hopefully fueled by more than just happy thoughts), and bungalow reservations are falling into line...
P.S. The title of this post roughly means "I like skiing!" The word for "like" in Japanese is pronounced nearly the same as the word "ski"...so saying that you like skiing is pronounced: "Ski ski!" Actually, if you want to be supercorrect, "Ski ga ski!" is better (but that makes this hilarious joke less funny)...at least I can impress some 7th graders with this sort of humor.