My Week In Ylläs

Me entering Ylläs I took a picture with a big Reindeer.

So, we had a week as a holiday starting last Saturday, and my Host parents had a plan to have a lot of fun in Ylläs, where we skied nearly every day from when the slopes opened at 10am and when we got tired which was at about 5pm.

It was awesome.

On the first day which was the Sunday it was just myself, Piavi (my host mother), and Arto (my host father), and OH GOSH they could ski. Like they would just shred through the slopes as if they were butter, and then there was me.

Now my skiing career is about as long as my beard, non-existent. I only got a proper introduction at the start of this year when my family and I went to mammoth in America for a week, where I was forced to get lessons by my wonderful Mother (love ya mum, and yes I am still alive).

AND THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT.

My giddy gosh. Like SWEET FIDDLESTICKS.

You have never known such pain as when you have tried skiing on the slopes of a mountain where the wind is literally trying to rip you off of the mountain, and the snow is ice.

As you ski down the slope it is all good, you just pick up speed a lot faster, but then you try to turn and then all hell breaks loss as you realize that ice has as much grip as I have hair on my back (Maybe I should stop talking about my body hair (MMMMMMHHHHHH……nah). So, as you turn on this super slippery icy mountain, your skis turn into a snowboard and you just slide sideways on the ice for about 20 metres until you start turning. Though after going up and down the mountain a few more times, I started to get used to skiing on ice.

But after that first day, I couldn’t feel my legs. They had been burning all day long as I was bending them as hard as I could to try and turn on this Ice. No, my legs weren’t burning they were in the pits of hell because they were really damn hot.

So yeah, I think my leg muscles have gotten bigger (I’m getting buff).

But yeah, the most interesting part was the fact that we where skiing in a really dense mountain fog. Like I could only see about 20 metres in front of me and that’s it. So, I was like super scared. When going up the gondola, it felt almost like the scene out of a horror movie where the victims are entering into the place they are going to die. So that was cool.

Just to add another flavour into this mixture of pooping my pants scary experience, Piavi goes ridiculously fast, Arto is almost as fast, just a little slower, and I was in beginner skis. Also, they were going down black runs……SOOOOO what do you think this responsible young man did. If you said slowly build up in difficulty to the black, you were incorrect. I basically threw myself off that mountain and achieving speeds that Barry Alan can only dream about.

NOW BEGINNER SKIS, ohhhh myyyy GOSH, do not try going down anything fast while in Beginner skis because these skis just slip off. So, I fell hard. Like I am skiing, doing the big long turns as I was taught and, on every turn, travelling about 10 metres sideways because I was going really fast, and on one turn I felt this big yank on my foot that was closest to the mountain. I look down and my whole ski from that foot was gone, next thing I know I lose my balance, and fall onto my gut, travel about 10 metres rolled onto my buttocks and lose my other ski, and then grind my rear end into the side of the mountain.

Luckily there was a dude who grabbed my skis for me and helped me out. But yeah that was the biggest fall, and I am never going down a black slope in beginner skis again.

But I was fine overall, just freezing from the ice that had gotten inside of my jacket. That fall was also at the end of the day which meant that I could go home and hop into the sauna, which I did religiously at the end of each day, and I could because the little apartment we were in had a sauna.

So where we were living was very small. It was made for about 2 adults and 2 children under the age of 12. Well, we where that except the children are just under the age of 18. The living room is also the main bedroom and also the dining room and also the children's bedroom all in one. So, there was one room for the bathroom and sauna, and then one room for everything else. So, it was feeling pretty crowded. But it was nice.

After sauna and dinner, we would then watch a movie, now on one night, we watched Twilight (yeah that is where the joke should end). The movie is really bad that I found it really funny and cringe, that I was bouncing up and down on the floor next to my bed like the little child I am and then jumped from the floor to my bed CRACK!!!! I broke the bed. I broke the left side beam that made up the main frame of the bed. Nobody freaked out actually, Iiris just said “I told you so” because she said, “you should be careful because you might break the bed”, and she was correct.

This was Piavi’s Parent’s holiday house, so it was okay. No damage was really done. We called in a carpenter and he repaired it with some glue and a piece of wood, so it is sort of okay. But now I am like super careful when I crawl into bed now.

Other than that, I was very happy with how I skied. Been a bit tired and sore but very happy.

On Wednesday, Andrew, another rotary exchange student went for a ski together and that was a lot of fun. Andrew was really good at skiing to probably because he skis every day and he is from Canada where you can ski. But we mainly hit all the best runs and mucked around by going through all the trees.

But I also got him to take a video of me doing somethings while skiing.

While I was without a jumper on.

On Thursday the host fam and I took a break from skiing and visited the ICE VILLAGE. Amazing. A literal work of art, where I just recorded myself making commentary on all the sculptures and bedrooms.

It was really beautiful

On the last day of skiing, Friday, it was -10 degrees on the hill, so really cold. Like any bare skin that was showing was immediately frozen. But that wasn’t even the worst part, the ice was the worst part. Some places on the hill didn’t even have snow on them, they were just ice. So you would be skiing and try and turn and you will literally not turn at all, most likely you just slip.

SO overall it was awesome.

But my proudest moment was finding the illusive Wasabus

Kiitos for reading

stay Awesome

Fletcher Kendall