Saturday ski trip

So my students organised a skiing trip for this Saturday. I invited the French crew to come with me. They're all good skiiers. I was told I'd even be able to snowboard. For 120 yuan ($20 Cdn), transportation, lunch, equipment rentals (including a snowsuit) and the lift ticket would all be included. Even if it sucked the experience would be worth it.

We were to meet at 7:30 AM at South Gate. We met at Loic's place around 7 AM for coffee and baoze and then we hurried to be on time. We arrived and no-one was there! Just one student and she didn't know where the bus was or where the other people were... So we waited. Another student arrived and got us on the bus where we continued to wait...and wait. It was 8 AM and a few more students had arrived. We finally left around 8:15 AM and there were a dozen of us on the bus. We crossed the city and went into the Western suburbs. It took around an hour and a half.

For most (if not all) of the students who came, it was their first time skiing ever. We arrived at the mountain - well, more like a hill - and realised that it was definitely fake snow (we had ancticipated this), and only ONE slope (we were wondering how many slopes there'd be)!!! It was just a bit worse than what we had expected...

Guillaume goofing off and I'm helping a student's friend get his skis on...for the first time in his life!

In the end, there was only one snowboard available, so I didn't snowboard. Renting the clothes was actually NOT included, so we didn't rent any clothes because there wasn't much of a point...I skiied in my Banana Republic pin-stripe pants!

There was the equivalent of a tow-rope on either side of the slope - you put a pole between your legs and let it pull you up the hill. There's Guillaume and I looking back at Katia. The guy in yellow standing near the top of the hill is a worker - there were a dozen of them on the slope, at all different points, and they pull up and move people who have fallen over themselves either in the tow rope area or on the mountain. They recover lost poles and skis and try to teach people a little...although not officially. It's funny to watch them running all over the place, helping people up.
The view UP the mountain. I guess this is the equivalent of Cypress' bunny hill.
And the view DOWN the mountain. It took maybe thirty seconds to go down... I spent a couple of hours in the morning teaching my students how to ski. I became a ski instructor! I was pleased with myself because after a couple of hours they were able to go down without falling. I taught them to snow plow and turn and everything. They were very happy themselves.
Gaetan and Loic in the cafeteria. Lunch turned out not to be included either! Good thing we bought our own picnics (sandwiches) and Loic and Guillaume bought some food. You can see the ski lift in the background of this pic, but it wasn't working when we went - there wasn't enough snow!
After lunch we decided to go for a hike in the nearby mountains rather than continue skiing... It was pretty cold but we were walking so it was a constant struggle between being too hot and too cold. I was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, a warm sweater, a fleece jacket, a wind-breaker fleece vest, and my big winter coat, plus stockings, tights, sweat pants AND my woollen Banana Republic pants. Many, many layers :-)
The path we took was quite well made.
We had some nice views from the top of the mountains that we climbed - this is of a lake that we decided to go down to. I didn't put a picture up of the lake for some reason, but it was quite nice, although it might've been some sort of a chemical dump. We did see ducks in the lake, and part of it was frozen, which means it couldn't have been that polluted or environmentally damaged.
A view of the industrial western suburb of Beijing. Lots of smoke stacks and pollution made it hard to see the extent of the city.

Gaetan, me and Loic at the back of the mini-van taxi we took to get back to the ski lodge. We had traipsed down the mountain to the lake and then had no idea how to get back...Katia didn't want to go back up the mountain because it would've been too difficult (we had done some bush whacking coming down...) so we continued along a road having no clue if it was going to take us anywhere near the ski lodge.

We ended up coming to a factory-like place that also breeded large pigs. Luckily we found a bus depot where we took a bus that would've taken us to the western-most subway station, but we got off ahead of time once we got on a main road in order to take a taxi back to the ski lodge. We stopped a mini-van who knew of the place we were talking about (we weren't sure of the name of the ski lodge!) and for 15 yuan ($2.50) we were brought safely to the school bus we were to take home. It was only 4 PM and we had been told to be back by 5 PM, but we left at 4 PM because the sun was setting and it was getting too dark and cold to ski.
Loic and Guillaume completely wasted (tired) on the bus home. We got caught in traffic and were home around 6 PM - took us two hours!
We partied at Loic's place Saturday evening. This is me - I do NOT have a mullet, Rachel!!!
Gaetan...
and Katia!!! So funny...

Anyway, that was my Saturday. Today I've got to work because I haven't been working!!! On Friday I had lunch with my Chinese colleagues and bought my plane ticket home with a couple of my students (they drove me in their car). It took two hours. Traffic was bad. I arrive on Monday, January 9th and will be leaving on the 27th with Nicole, who's coming to visit Beijing!!! We had dinner with Tom (the British dude) and Matt (the American dude). I forget what we did after dinner, but we must've sat around and chatted for a bit because I remember going to bed around midnight...and having to get up at 6:15 AM the next day to go skiing!