New Zealand Instructor Course – Week 6
With 2 weeks to go until the exam it was time to step it up. This basically meant death by demonstrations! A majority of time during the day was spent lapping the intermediate slopes practising our basic parallel turns and advanced wedge demo’s and although frustrating at times, eventually the hard work began to pay off and improvements were evident.
On Tuesday morning we had a rare break from demo’s but little did we know that what was about to happen was far more taxing! With our instructor jackets back on we were briefed on the logistics of a station teach. This basically involves a couple of instructors at each station allowing beginners to progress right from learning how to put their skis on through to performing basic wedge turns. If a student struggles at any particular station they just repeat the activity again. In theory this all sounded great. However, add in 160 school children who have never skied before on a small beginners area and you have a recipe for complete carnage but a lot of fun!
I spent most of the session teaching them to side step up the hill. It became increasingly difficult to be enthusiastic about side stepping, especially as the kids saw more and more of their friends cruising up the magic carpet! However, I managed and for the final part of the session I helped in encouraging them to start turning. Finally, after a crazy 3 hours and a well deserved high five from the ski school director, we were back into demo’s!
Friday soon came around and we were rewarded with a trip to watch the rugby in Christchurch, Canterbury vs Waikato. This was particularly exciting for Pieter who had never been to a big, live sports event before. The match was followed by a curry and then back home for a late drink in the pub.
Saturday, Zoe and I took a trip to Christchurch to do some shopping. We hopped on the West Coast Shuttle and after a great chat with the driver he even gave us a discount on our fare. That night we went for dinner at Springfield backpackers with a few of the Porters staff. A few games of pool later on topped off an altogether great day.
Sunday was meant to be a day of rest. It started well, we all chilled out watching Kung Fu Panda (very funny, I highly recommend it) and later a meal at the pub. Until this point it had been a very relaxing, leisurely day. However, it soon became clear that this was fast becoming the biggest night in the pub of the season so far. Without going into too much detail there was a lot of dancing on tables, tequila slammers with the assistance of someone lying on the bar and the night finally ended with naked men being photographed at the doughnut!
A final point for anyone reading this who may be thinking of coming on the course. As suggested earlier in the blog, what goes on in the pub definately does not stay in the pub. There are no secrets! Any faux pas that occur, expect to be remminded of them the next day by all the mountain staff and most of the locals and expect this continue until someone else does something even more stupid!
To read Week 7 CLICK HERE
