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Friday, November 23, 2012

Winter is here

And life is awesome. It's been snowing the past week, the mountains are open and I could literally not be happier.

I'll do a quick update on everything that I can think of concerning my life here in Whistler:


Bld. 2 #409:
Is where I live. Staff housing is a bunch of houses containing approximately 1000 employees of Whistler Blackcomb, and I live in building 2. Gabbi and York are so sweet and fun to hang out with which makes coming home so nice. Chloe is my roomie and it is just awesome. We try to plan to eat together and do stuff together as often as we can and we've had a couple of nights where we were supposed to get up early but ended up spending hours laying in bed just talking and laughing instead. 

Friends:
Are easy to make here! Employees are easy to spot and everyone are so nice. Work gives you a lot of friends too, and my bosses are awesome at calling around the lifts saying "Beers at x, see you there", and then the whole lifty crew goes to have a few beers and laughs at a bar. 

Food:
Is expensive!!! Me and Chloe try to shop together and cook together, but sometimes it just doesn't fit our schedule. Noodles are often the way to go even though I can literally feel on my body how bad it is for you. A packet of noodles is about 1 dollar though, so it's just so easy to go for that.
We only have a stove top too, so I constantly have to make sure that what I'm about to buy is something that I can actually cook on my stove top and does not require an oven.
18 Below is a restuarant close to staff housing which opens after mountain hours just for employees. It's 7 bucks for a meal which includes unlimited pop (or if you're trying to lose weight as I am, unlimited water), a bowl of salat, a bowl of soup, main dish, dessert and fruit. It's a good deal if you can drag yourself down there after work, and you will rarely be able to finish your whole meal 'cause there's a LOT of food. 

Australians:
Oh my god. They're everywhere!!! I feel like I'll learn australian before I learn Canadian, which was what I wanted to learn in the first place, haha. My roomies are aussies though, and I guess they're okay. Actually pretty much all of my friends are aussies and granted, they're pretty great, but man!! do they have some weird expressions. The most commonly used one from Chloe is the following: "Calm your farm down", which basically means calm down. She'll say it all the time but especially at me when I'm tired and grumpy, haha. 
I fear Australia Day......................

Canadians:
Haven't met so many yet, but I love the few that I have. They're insane at snowboarding and luckily for me I work with two of them. It really challenges me to board down with them and that's good. Canadians are so nice and sweet and that brings me to my next subject:

Politeness:
Wow, are Canadians polite!! You can't walk past a Canadian without getting a smile or a "Hi!", and they'll always be up for a small chat and they're always very interested in where I come from. I noticed that especially the Canadian people on my chair today appreciated me saying hi to them.
The thing though that really hit me about their politeness is this: In our busses, when people hit stop, it doesn't say stop on the sign, it says "Stop Requested" as if it's up to the bus driver if he wants to stop the bus and the Canadian guy will just be like "Sorry, didn't mean to be in your way", haha.

Work:
Is awesome! I love it so much. I've been working the past three days, and it's been really great. Tuesday was my first day and I met a 7.15. I met my returning guy which is someone who worked as a lifty last year. He's one of the Canadians and he seems really awesome. We had to board down to the bottom of my chair, which is Catskinner. Catskinner is the chair that I requested so I was SOOOO happy to get to work on it. Was a bit less happy when we got to the bottom of it and had to dig out the whole thing. We spent ALL day just digging and stomping the snow down so it could be a real lift.
The following day was a dry run day which basically meant that we got to the chair, made it run, waited all day because obviously no one was getting on the lift, then went home and was payed for pretty much just waiting. 
Today was opening day and also my first day working with people. 

It seems that the lifty job is just the right thing for me. I LOVED getting to talk to all those people and bumping chairs kept me warm, so the day just went by SO fast.
I'm working on a fixed grip lift which means I have to bump chairs which is basically pulling the chair to slow it down so it doesn't knock people over, it's kinda fun to do and I can definitely feel my arm muscles coming on. 

Training:
Obviously training is over. It was fun but I'm way more excited about working for real now. 

Catskinner:
Catskinner is the lift that I've been working on the past three days. I instantly fell in love with it! Catskinner is located right between an easy run and the pro's park. That means I got all the park rats coming in from one side being cool and all, and all the older people who really enjoy a quick chat before getting on the chair. It made a good contrast and kept me busy and smiling which was really nice. 

Dry runs: 
Are finally over, and I'm so happy about that. Dry runs is just running the chair without people for an entire shift, which means just about 10 hours. You dig a little snow if you can find something that needs digging but basically just waits around and feels really sorry for yourself that you're not allowed to take ride breaks on dry run days.. 

Opening day:
I was really nervous about opening day to be honest. I've never worked with both people and a lift, but luckily it felt so natural and I really enjoyed the whole day. People were lined up at the bottom when I loaded the chair to go up to my own, and everyone, literally EVERYONE included my awesome supervisor were so stoked that we all just ran around like happy idiots building mazes and getting ready for the people. 
By the end of opening day I was in love with Blackcomb, Catskinner and the lifty job. 

Parents on lifts:
Lesson learned. Don't trust them. ALWAYS slow the chair down even if the parent says that their kids can handle it. They can't, and the parent can NOT pull the poor child up on their own. Where does this come from, you might wonder. Here's what happened today on my lift: 
A guy came up with his two kids. I asked them if he wanted me to slow the chair down, but he declined. Being a naive newbie I acepted his request and let them load the chair. HUGE MISTAKE. The guy loaded the chair, and the kids ended up just being pushed ahead by the chair, while the guy frantically tried to pull both of them up on each of his sides. Both me and the other lifty was running after lift, basically hanging on it trying to pull the poor kids on. At one point I was actually being pulled up by the chair and had to let go and just jump down. It was insane and the kid was still hanging. Eventually he managed to pull the kid up, but I learned my lesson!!! I'm never ever letting a parent decide wether or not I should slow down the lift. 

Snowboarding:
IS SO AWESOME. Snow has been falling the last week which has made conditions so good. I snowboarded sunday and monday and I can really feel how I'm getting better already. Luckily for me some of my new friends are really good at snowboarding and I can go with them. It challenges me in the best way making me better run by run. It feels so good. On top of that I get to ride on work too, so I'm pretty much riding every day, and I plan to be riding park within not very long. I just need to have my switch side completely down before I can start park. But I've already got lots of offers from collueges and friends who wants to help me get starting on the park thing. 

Yeah, so that covers basically everything in my life right now. I'm really living the dream, and yeah, I'm probably not coming home. Every one are telling me to stay for the summer, and it sounds so great. Then they add "and if you stay for the summer you're staying for the winter". So yeah.. My supervisor, Gabe, is on the lookout for a Canadian guy for me, because appearently you only have to date a canadian for 12 months and then you get to stay here. 
Of course I miss you, sweet danish friends ( <3 <3 <3 ) but I guess you know how much I've wanted this and well, it's just so much more than I've ever dreamed of :) 


Monday, November 19, 2012

First real day of snowboarding!!!

TODAY WAS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Woke up to snow outside again today. It's been raining all week so that in it self was awesome.
I really wanted to go snowboarding but my roommates girlfriend wasn't sure if she wanted to go. We convinced her and she told us later that it was worth it.

After spending a long time in the village getting her staff pass and renting skis for her, we finally caught the gondola up. It started snowing as soon as we got a few hundred meter up the hill, and everything was covered in white.

We finally got up there and I had the best day ever. There was so much snow, so few people and everything was just pure awesome!!!
I don't think I can ever come home! I love this place, this new life and I love the snow and snowboarding, life is truly fantastic here :) I am so happy!!!



Just a few pics of today 

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Almost a month in Canada!!

I know I said I would post entries more frequently, but I'm having so much fun I just can't find the time for it.

I started training again monday which was a short day. I actually don't remember what we did though.
Tuesday was awesome because we met at 12 for a BBQ and to meet the returning staff. Then we had a short indoor session where they explained to us that we were opening on saturday.

They gave us wednesday off to prepare for the opening, so me and Chloe tried to get on the free bus to Squamish, but the bus was full so we had to go back home. I think we ended up doing nothing all day instead.
I had thursday off too because they split us up so all could do dry runs and exams.

Friday was exciting because we had dry runs which basically is running the lift without people. We prepared for opening day and just hung out a bit. And got to snowboard, yay!!
Later on we had exams which was boring, but I passed.

I decided that I should probably have a real night out so when I got home I started getting ready. Chloe was up for it too. I had early dinner, but because I had gotten up at 6 I was so tired that I took a nap. From 6 to 9! I wasn't sure if I wanted to go out, but finally decided that since I was already in my clothes I should go out.

So me and Chloe drank some cider with our roommates, then got a cab down to Maxx Fish witch is a bar down in the village. We had an awesome night!

Today I actually promised Chloe to take her up to the mountain for opening day, but we were just too hungover to go anywhere, so we spent all day in bed taking naps and eating junk food.
I think I'm going to go up on the mountain tomorrow though!

Oh yeah and on monday it's been an entire month since I moved to Canada! It doesn't feel like that long at all and I'm very scared that time will go by too fast. I'm having too much fun!! Canada is awesome :)

Sunday, November 11, 2012

It's been too long....

... Since I posted the last time! Because so many things have happened! So this will be a very long entry, but I'll try and make it more fun by throwing in random photos that I've taken.

Last time I wrote was about my first day of training. Well, here's a resume about the rest of the week:

Monday was not a real day of training. We got to pick up our uniform at fill out at paper about abilities and preferences.
 This is what Whistler mountain looked like monday morning


Tuesday included an indoor session which was loooong and not so interesting, but also an outdoor session where we got our hands on what we will actually do the next 6 months.

This is a parking lot and Blackcomb mountain covered in clouds monday afternoon when I met up with Chloe and Kat. 

Wednesday started out with an outdoor session which was a continuation of tuesdays outdoor session. We had to go around to different locations in Whistler and learn about different kind of aspects of the lifty job.
Our first location was at the bottom of a chairlift and the subject of that session was "Hangers". Hangers are the people that for some reason didn't get on the chairlift properly and are now hanging from it. We had to practise emergency procedures and needed some volunteers.  A guy from my team and myself volunteered, and it was actually a lot of fun. We had to climb up a ladder to the chair which was kind of scary, and then we had to wait for our rescue team to come pick up the fire blanket so they could save us. We then got to jump from 2-3 meters up high and into the blanket.


I kind of messed up but not on purpose! The rescue team had to count to three and by that time I should have climbed out from the chairlift and was supposed to just hang from my arms curled up into a little ball. But it had rained the night before so all the pipes were wet and cold and well, they only made it to somewhere between 1 and 2 before I fell because I couldn't hang on. The good thing is I had a really good rescue team that managed to catch me anyways! And it was actually a lot of fun because I didn't actually plan to drop so it surprised me as much as everyone else :)

Later that day we had an indoor session again which was as indoor sessions are. Not as much fun.
Thursday started out with one more outdoor session. This time we got to go halfway up the mountain which was really fun and interesting and I think we all kind of felt like VIPs for getting to go up there. We followed the same program as the other days with different kind of stations that we had to go to and learn about different stuff. That was interesting as well.


This is Blackcomb mountain from the same spot thursday on our lunch break. The three guys are all lifties and I thought that it looked pretty good with the idientical uniforms. We often have to walk though the village in big groups, and since we're required to wear or uniforms at all times during training and work, we get a lot of looks from tourists.

After our lunch break we had our first season orientation which was a lot of sitting down and listening, but they managed to make it more interesting because of a lot of candy throwing, haha :) (They would ask question and throw a chocolate bar at the one who could answer correctly)

Friday went with hanging out with Chloe with whom I had a sleep over with from thursday to friday. We went and discovered Function Junction which was not as much fun as expected though we did find Bounce (a place with trampolines and foam pitches that you can jump into) and the most amazing little bakery. So we're definitely going back there some time.

I REALLY want a car like this (or maybe a little bigger, haha)

 And well, the price isn't too bad. PLEAASSEEE, dad? <3 <3 <3
I think we all agree on this one! 

Saturday was a BIG day! It was Wal-mart day!! Me and my two roomies Gabbi and York got up ealy to catch the free bus to Squamish. They didn't sign up but managed to get on the bus anyways.
We bought everything that we needed for the apartment and even a little christmas tree in plastic! I also bought an unbelievable amount of food because it's so much cheaper than in Whistler.
All in all I spent almost 400 bucks and is now finally really settled into the apartment with brand new pots and pans, a tub mat so we won't slip and fall and so much more.


The view from the bus to Squamish

Saturday was also the day that Chloe finally got permission to move into my apartment!!! She'd been put in an apartment with three Canadian 18-year olds and that was just too much for her to handle. She wrote an email to house and they finally let her move in with me! So when we had unpacked from the wal-mart trip, Chloe came with all of her stuff (and that is A LOT!!!!)  and moved into my room. I'm making her clean today because it's soo messy right now even though I cleaned the room to perfection so she could move in, haha.



More views on the way to Squamish

We (or Chloe wanted, but forced me to come with her) wanted to go out at night. We got ready at eight and just sat and hung out with our roomies while we drank some cider which is really cheap and decent tasting. We went down to Whistler at ten and was bombardet by drunk guys that flocked around us because Chloe was so clever as to bring a flash light for the walk into the village. When we finally got there we spent like half an hour in queue to a night club called Garfinkels. The entrance fee was 6 dollars and then you had to go down and pay 4 to put you jacket in the wardrobe.


On the way to Squamish. Sea to Sky highway - do it before you die, it's worth it. 

We decided that we didn't want to spend that much money, so we walked out of that club and wanted to find something else. Turns out we made the bigget mistake of our life in Whistler when we decided to go out on a saturday. The village was filled with what the locals call Vancouver-Girls. This is girls wearing teeny tiny cocktail dresses and VERY high heels walking around the streets in just that (and minus 7 degrees) and cutting the queues because they're slutty and the doormen falls for it.

Eventually I got really pissed at the vancouver-girls and the extremely high cover charges (18-20 dollars just to get in) and we went and bought pizza then took the free bus home. We crashed in front of the tv for 20 minutes then went to bed.


On the way and in Squamish.

Right now it's sunday morning, I woke up early because I'm sick and Chloe is the loudest snorer in the entire world. I've watched a danish tv show that I really like (and good-guy Dr.dk streams it online for free) and now I'm so starving that I might go out and make some breakfast.

I promised my mom and dad to skype with them later on today since it's a kind of holiday in Denmark and my grand parents are coming over for dinner, so we can all skype. That is pretty much the plan for today. I think I might try to read my entire lifty manual today too, since we have exams coming up wednesday and thursday and I'm terrified of not passing the test.

Well, that was it for this time. I'll try and blog more frequently so it wont always be entries this long, but no guarantee since I love being here so much I'm actually considering becoming a citizen here (Denmark only gets a 1 year visa ONE time per person). haha :) I hope you're all well, dear readers, because I'm having the time of my life! :)

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

First real day of training

Today is tuesday and I finally had my first real day of training. Sunday we had that meeting where they informed us about everything that was going to happen.
We met a few people and I got my awesome nametag.

Yesterday we went and got our uniforms and filled out a sheet about our abilities and preferences on lifts and that kind of stuff. My uniform looks like this (even though the picture is really bad):

Today I had to get up at 7 which was not fun since I'd gotten used to sleep until 9am. We met at 18 below at 8 and had a indoor session from 8-12. To be honest it was really boring. We had to go through a lot of formalities and just had to sit and listen for a looooooong time, when all I wanted to do was be outside by the lifts and learn. 

We got a lunch break from 12-1 so we went back and ate then. At 1 we met outside 18 below again and finally we got to go outside! We had to go to different locations and learn different stuff. It was interesting but also a very long day. 

I was supposed to meet Chloe and Kathryn at the furniture warehouse for tacos and hockey but I was just so tired that I decided to just stay at home. I made noodles which I spilled on my lap three times. Now I'm just watching tv with my roommates and plotting on getting a bowl of reese puffs or maybe a pop tart or a reese cup. I'm going to get fat but I REALLY love these things, haha. Hopefully the lifty job will keep me just a little fit despite my addictions for reese and pop tarts...... 

Monday, November 5, 2012

1 week into Whistler

I know it's been a while since I last posted, and I don't really have any excuse, haha. I have been doing nothing at all!

I wanted to go to Whistler before I started working, but it turns out that having a 4 people apartment to yourself is really boring, and that it's not so funny walking around town completely on your own too. So I spent most of last week in the apartment skyping with friends and family, grocery shopping and watching tv when I finally bought the cable for the tv.

Monday was a big day for me because Torstein Horgmo's mockumentary called Horgasm a love story came out. It's an amazing movie and I've watched it three times since.

Wednesday was Halloween, and after much consideration I decided I had to experience Halloween. I was dressed as a spider web and went with Hannah down to the common room in building 7 which is the building right across the street from mine. I got 7% ciders and porbably had a little too much so the rest of the night is a blur. I do remember huge amounts of people dressed up dancing in a club.

Chloe and Kathryn, my two australian friends and also my adoptive parents, finally came on friday. We wanted Chloe to come live in my apartment, but we were told that everyone was already allocated, so we have to call back in a few weeks. I did get two new roommates though! It's a couple and they're sharing a room with bunk beds so it really sucks for them. They're really nice, but I'm not sure they're staying because naturally they will want a double bed if they can get one.

We went out friday to celebrate them coming so we ate at Furniture Warehouse Restaurant which has 5 dollar meals, so that is awesome. Will definitaly be coming back there on wednesdays as they have 25cents wings on wednesdays!

I went to a sporting store and found this really cute canucks baby outfit. Too bad I don't know anyone that I could send it to, haha


Yesterday Chloe texted me and asked me if I wanted to come play beer pong in her apartment in Brio. Of course I wanted to so they picked me up in car after their information session at the cabin, and we drove to the market to get beer, cups and pingpong balls, then we went to Chloes and made dinner. I met her roommates Luke and Gus who are both sponsored.


My very first game of beer pong.



Gus has had many seasons here so he gave us all the tips and tricks.Kathryn came down a little later to hang out with us. Then we played beer pong which was awesome. I think my team won, but I'm not sure, haha!
The rest of the night went with haning out in the couch talking and watching Horgasm which Luke had on his computer as he is a snowboarder too.

Today is sunday the 4th. We weren't hungover this morning but me and Chloe decided to go out to eat anyways, so we went to Tapleys and ate brunch buffet, which was delicious. Then we met up with Kathyn in the village and we all went back to Glacier to get Chloe and Kat checked into the Cabin and to get me home to a shower.

My delicious brunch from this morning.


In about half an hour I have my info session. It's a meeting where the lifties get to meet their supervisors and we get our training schedule and that kind of stuff. I'm really excited about it and I can't wait to get started on work - especially after talking to Gus who seems to think that lifty is the best job in the world.

Ok, well that was a lot of news! I'm going to get ready for the info session now. I'll be back with more information about the traning to become a lifty soon!
Life is amazing here and I'm already plotting on becoming a permanent citizen here. Sorry, mom and dad <3

Just a little update. Whistler Blackcomb wrote us a week ago and asked us what we wanted on our nametag. We couldn't pick nicknames, but I went ahead and asked for my nickname anyways and this is the result. It's awesome!