When I first went to the middleschool, I felt prepared and ready to go after all the preparations that were done. What I didn’to account for was the nerves that I had when I saw all the kids infront of me. Public speaking is not my forte and as a result, I was not able to think as straight as I hope during my discussion. The kids at the middleschool were great and I was very thankful that we had an attentive class that wanted to do our assignment. It is true that teachers really have a hard job and putting together a lesson plan even if it is only for a half an hour can be really difficult. The amount of thought that had to go into each part of a lesson plan is a lot. Many revision are essential to create a plan that will work under all circumstances. Sometimes you can’t account for everything and as a result, being able to do some improvisational thinking can be really important. Teaching was really fun and a great learning experience that I hope to have at another point in my college career and maybe later on in life.

Moving away from digital media for the evening, I wanted to touch on the awesome winter that is coming.  I don’t know about you guys, but I am a huge skier.  I don’t race or anything, I just love skiing for fun and have been lucky enough to ski all over the US and in Argentina.  There are many more places that I want to ski, including Europe, Japan, and Canada.  There are just so many awesome places to ski and it can be very overwhelming.  I grew up in Northern California, so I would ski a lot in Tahoe and sometime my family would fly to Park City, Utah and ski some of the resorts there.  I recently moved to Vermont for college, which is definitely a big change from California.  I love the fact that my college (Middlebury) is surrounded by several very famous mountains for back east skiers.  There’s Stowe, Killington, Mad River, Sugar Bush, the Middlebury bowl, and many more that are as little as 30 minutes away.  I know that the snow on the east coast can be a lot worse to ski on than in California, but regardless I am glad that I will be able to ski while I am in school any time I want.  Everyone tells me that the snow is much icier due to the cold and that there is no powder, but with the climate changing I’m hoping that there will be some powder days at some point. It will be so fun to be able to go up to the mountains and ski with friends at any point throughout the winter.

Another topic I wanted to get to in this post is the snow that is already falling in Tahoe and Whistler and even Vermont.  Killington has already opened and its only October.  Whistler has so much power it is insane.  Tahoe got almost two feet of snow in the last day.  If the winter is here to stay, us skier and snowboarders are looking at a promising season.  It is exciting stuff and I am looking forward to getting out there and hitting the slopes. Attached are some photos of Whistler in Canada, Killington in Vermont, and Northstar in Tahoe.

Killington Opening day 10/25

Tahoe this morning with one foot of new snow

Whistler Blackcomb Full of power, dating all the way back to the beginning of October. Unbelievable!