Ice Skating or Skiing

 

Ice Skating or Skiing: That is the question! The answer, however, is easy for me, and that is ice skating. The reason is quite simple: I had a really bad skiing experience and have never tried it again.

Let’s go into story mode:

In seventh grade, our class travelled to the Italian Alps for a school ski trip. I had never skied before, and although I wasn't confident, I decided to give it a try. The first indication that skiing might not be for me came when I lost my balance and fell as I was getting off the lift. One of the teachers encouraged me to follow his example with the seat lifts, the kind you place between your legs. Watching him, I tried to imitate his timing to release the lift, but I ended up letting go too early. I slid back down the mountain, losing one of my skis along the way. I had to make my way back up the slope to retrieve it and struggled to put the ski back on my boot.

What made things more difficult was that before going up the slope, we didn’t get any lessons on how to do the pizza or do the fries. That was all done while we were already waiting to go down the little slope.

It was my turn to go down the slope, and there I was pushing myself off. They told us to do the pizza slice, well, it was actually quite hard to keep my legs in the pizza formation. Because the snow was so hard, no fluffy snow, ha ha. There I went full speed down the slope into the snowbank, where I promptly hit my back on a large rock, my vision went blurry, and my heartbeat was crazy.

I was brought back to the little chalet in the ambulance. They carried me up the stairs to my room. They performed more tests and concluded, “No more skiing for you.”

This is why I prefer ice skating. Thank you for attending my TED Talk!