snowboarding

So ... the weekend before last ... the 25th - 27th of August ... I went snowboarding for my FIRST TIME EVER!!! It was awesome. I went down to Turoa/Whakapapa with my boyfriend Giulio and his work ... so it was a free trip apart from my gear hire which was all of $55. A big relief since I have NO money at the moment ... can't wait to pay off my credit cards!!

Anyways ... it was perfect weather on the way down, and perfect weather on the way back ... but wouldn't you know it ... the day we go boarding it's raining and snowing on us, and Turoa is closed. They had half of Whakapapa open, and since it was my first time I was just on the learner slopes anyway, so we made a decent go of it. Thanks heaps to my lovely boyfriend who due to a back injury wasn't allowed to go really hard out on the slopes, so he taught me how to board instead. I spend A LOT of time on my ass, and by the end of the few hours there I was totally shattered! It really takes it out of you when you're having to roll over, get up on to the board again, and try to steer the thing... then catch yourself when you fall, and start all over again. But I loved it! :-)

It was a weekend of drunk engineers ... given that Giulio is a civil engineer ... and some of those boys are WAAAAY too dodgy for my liking, but you learn to block it out and have a good time anyway. And I met some interesting people. Kate and I escaped to the TV to watch Rove Live and get some normality into the evening on the friday night. Many of us had drunk a fair amount that night ... I know I did. Luckily I don't get hangovers :-) Saturday as I mentioned was the boarding day ... so that was a decent chunk of the day, then we all went out for dinner and drinks, and watched the first half of the NZ vs SA rugby game. Once it was clear we were slaughtering them Giulio and I went home to bed ... far too shattered from the day to stay up til 4am! Sunday we travelled back, then went for a swim and a spa ... then I went to church ... followed by a very early nite in bed. 9pm is a record for me I think!! haha. But I'm working on getting closer to that more often. Sleep is pretty damn good!

All in all ... a weekend I'd do again. Awesome to spend the weekend away, meet new people, chill out and have fun ... and all with such a gorgeous boy, haha. No complaints there :-)

The one downside ... I broke my camera so there's no shots of me in funky hire snowboarding gear :-( I may have salvaged some of the mountain before the camera died, but I'll have to wait til I find a way to get them off the memory stick without having the camera.