Week 2 round up!

During my second week I've done a lot! Wifi installed, snowboard improved, national insurance number acquired and even taught my first student. So let's go through last week:

Monday

Trip to Crambrook, the nearest 'large' town to get our social insurance number (SIN). We got up early and met our instructor Josh to catch the 'hospital' bus, a service that runs to the town from Invermere healthcare centre for people who need better facilities. A short drive in this country is at least 2 hours, which was the length of our trip. Caught up on some sleep and did some reading up on my snowboard instructor course. When we got into town we had to find the Service Canada to get our SIN. Josh dropped us off there and then told us to rendezvous at the local mall. Now Crambrook basically one big high way with loads of restaurants and a large selection of shops. Which should be easy to navigate right? Nope. Not in a foot of snow, we ended up asking directions from locals and shop owners to make sure we were going the right way! Taking a detour through a pawn shop that was one of the only pawns shops in Canada to be licensed to sell guns, and a pretty sweet snowboard shop we made it to the incredibly underwhelming mall.

A series of shops interlinked with an indoor corridor classified as a mall, we had a lot of time to kill until our bus home so we busied or selves exploring the various shops including Canadian tire (where you can buy ANYTHING) a computer store where I played the new lego Star Wars (insanely fun and next level lego game- recommend) and I slightly damaged a toy store with an airway hoverboard. I was like a little kid tearing round the shop, it was so fun!

My friend Michael aka Moose in Canadian tire.. Harry is helping with the antlers.

Tuesday 

Orientation day for all new employees of the resort and ski school! Full day of lectures in with all of my colleagues at the resort. We were taught about what it means to be a Panorama employee. What the logo and slogan and branding mean to the resort. As an exercise the CEO of the mountain resort who is also the chairman of the North American ski society got people to stand up and introduce themselves- the reward was a free branded baseball cap so guess who stood up first..

Nice cap huh? It was really interesting to gain a proper insight into the resort and get a feel for who the directors are and the regulations and employee expectations. They have a 5 point system we can use to make sure clients get an awesome experience - for example the 10' rule where if some comes that close you should greet them and ask them if you can help out. Other talks included what to do in an emergency on the mountain lead by the ski patrol director, and how to stay safe riding which was interesting. They also highlighted that our suggestions help push the resort forward and is one of the factors that contributed to Pano becoming 2016 best North American ski resort by the Times. So it's truly a great place to be.

The afternoon was a special introduction for the instructors, the best department! There were some cool introduction activities and then straight into all the technical stuff and how we get paid. Such as the tier system for private lessons: you get rewarded for bringing custom the the 'Ski and ride centre' (snow school rebranded for extra coolness) and ever 20 or so hours you get mean that your hourly rate increases by around £5-10 each time! And this rôles on from season to season. Which is super cool and a big incentive to stick around!

 The interns! Off and on the mountain.

Wednesday/Thursday

Back on the slopes for more training with Josh - the final days before opening day where we finally would get easier terrain to work on! For all our training so far we shared it with ski racers from around the world, on shody slopes with less snow and more rocks than you'd like! On a positive note we have improved dramatically thanks to this. Further more we finally installed wifi on Thursday, we have connection to home now! Feeling reconnected but it was nice to concentrate on learning how to live independently and get to know my house mates for a week first.

Friday

Opening day! Fortunately the boarders had a day off so we got up early and hit the slopes as one of the first people up the mountain! I took up my GoPro and we went all the way up to the summit and tried as many runs as we could. I got some decent footage for a rookie photographer- it's hard to ride with a selfie stick! It was incredibly enjoyable to just relax and ski the mountain how I wanted to and I managed to get some good shots, in particular when we decided to do a little off piste they had sectioned off for the public. Check it out:

Wipe out!

Love to all my familly xxx see you tomorrow!