My Experience Of School Skiing

It all started on a warm sunny day, my dad had just arrived from Michigan. He came into the house gave my siblings, my mother and me a hug and told us the big news. “We are moving to Michigan” he said. He said it so calmly as if expecting my siblings, my mother and myself to react in a good way. Immediately I started to panic, I didn’t want to leave the place I grew up in. I was only eleven years old, I didn’t know how the people in Michigan would be. Finally I spoke “ I don’t want to move dad, I love it here!” which he responded with “I’m sorry but we are going to move because we can’t afford to live here anymore” He said this so emotionless as if not knowing how this could affect me. I hardly got any sleep that night for the fact that my parents were arguing for what felt like all night, but in reality was just an hour.

When I woke up in the morning, my mom had left for work. My dad was singing in the kitchen, banging pots around. I got up, tiptoed down the hall, washed my face. A neatly wrapped present lay on the bathroom counter. It was addressed to me. I stuffed it into my robe pocket, and rushed back down the hall. Under the covers, I opened the package. On the first page of a small, leather notebook, an inscription read: to a writer, love your mother. I never wrote anything in the notebook. I could never think of anything good

It was a beautiful, sunny day in South Florida. I was six years old, playing by the pool with my new puppy. I loved swimming in the pool almost every day after school. I also enjoyed going out on our boat after school or crossing the street and going to the beach. My father came home one evening with some interesting news. Now, I do not remember exactly how I felt about the news at that time, but it seemed like I did not mind that much. He had announced that we were going to move back to my birth country, Belgium. I had been living in Florida for five years and it was basically all I had known so I did not know what to expect. I had to live with my mom at first, and then my sister would join us after she graduated high school and my father

Despite enjoying the antics of the little ones, I couldn’t procrastinate much longer. It was time to face the music and meet my cross country ski instructor. I was surprised to feel nervous, after all how difficult could cross country skiing be? For years, I have avidly watched the Olympic Winter Games and the cross country athletes appear to circumnavigate the course without difficulty. Surely I would be able to kick, stride and glide with the best of them. My fearless instructor Bryon introduced himself to the group and welcomed us to our session. With a calm confidence he assured us that we would love our new sport and be tackling the trails in no time. Hesitantly, I followed Bryan and within seconds I was on the ground doing a fantastic Bambi impersonation. This was trickier than it

When I was twelve years old my best friend’s family decided to try snowboarding and skiing for the first time, that’s when I learned my lesson. My best friend at the time was 14, he lived right down the road from my house and his family was my second family for a long time. His name was John, he invited me on the trip as well. We went to my house to ask my parents about the trip five day snowboarding trip. I asked them separately and got two different answers. My dad was all for it, he even offered to pay for everything. My mom on the other hand was worried because it was all the way in Pennsylvania and it was five days away from me . The fact that I had never been on a snowboard or skis in my life didn’t help my argument either. So as the day approached I still hadn't received a direct answer from my mom. So Tim, my friend’s dad went to my house and reassured her that I was in good hands and all that good stuff. When he arrived back at his house he said through my friend’s door “ Get packed we are leaving in two days” and the arrangements were made. On the day of the trip, my dad gave Tim the money for my equipment and such. He also turned to me and handed me my very first 100 dollar bill for whatever I wanted or needed on the trip. My mom handed me a prepaid cell phone and she told me to call her twice a day. I went

My father drops me off at school on a Saturday morning at 7:00 am with me fully dressed in the brown and turquoise snowsuit my mama had gotten me a few days before. As we pull into the elementary schools parking lot we see a dozen of other kids fully dressed to go on the ski and snowboarding trip like myself. I have never gone skiing before but I'm sure it will be fun, Daddy says that once I learn we can go up to the Bogus ski resort as a family. I say goodbye to my daddy and wish that he would be the one picking me up later that night when we get back but he has to take care of my baby sister Anna since Mama is gone. She won't be gone for long though, because she is coming back home tomorrow or the next day. Whenever the weather is good for

“I said we weren’t going.” Our mom said gently “But, I didn’t say that you weren’t going. We can’t go because your brother is too

Ski Patrol rode up with us coincidentally. When we got of i immediately fell, I wasn't used to riding with only one foot in. About 5 more rides later my brother was ready to ride the lift with me and my friend. I never really found out the kids name I just called him dude and stuff like that, Normal stuff 10 year olds call each other. The third day was really fun, my friend didn't come because he got hurt at the end of the second day. My mom wanted to be able to talk to us while we were on the mountain, so she bought walkie-talkies and earbuds that had microphones on it so that we could talk to each other and me and my brother could tell each other if we got separated or lost. This happened one time he went up the wrong lift without me and i had to find him on my way down. We were getting really good for our first time. We started trying the blues and were going pretty slow. At the end of the weekend it was time to go home. At 4:00 the lifts shut down and we changed into comfortable clothes and drove home. The next morning I was really sore and bruised up from all the falls. We later went back to another resort named Cataloochee. This time I took a friend by the name of

“To mountain to get wood and maybe an elk.” I read the note with a glum face. I had just gotten home for lunch when I read the note on the kitchen table. I finally decided that it was okay for my dad to be on his own sometimes but he needed help with a lot of things too. I heated up a quick lunch and was about to start eating when my dad walked in the back door. “If you want to go, you better get ready now!” I looked at him with surprise and shook my head yes. I ran down to my room and changed into what I needed to stay warm in the snow. After grabbing my overalls and a heavy snow coat, I ran out the back door. Dad was in the truck while I went to the back seat of the truck and threw in my overalls and coat. I spun around to the other side

I longed to spend time with my father. One night after school, I went up to my Dad nervously not knowing how he would react and ask him if he would like to play checkers with me, like we normally did. Following this, he screamed at me, told me to go to my room, and told me to leave him alone. I went to my room full of sadness and emotional pain feeling betrayed by

Around seven years ago, my family and I would always go to Colorado. Most of the time we went with another family or we brought some of our friends, and that year we went with another family, the Egan’s. We were having a great time just like the multiple times before, and we were eating meals, playing ping pong, watching Forest Gump or Pokemon, and we skied. I had some experience skiing, but Aidan, my friend, had never really skied before.

“C’mon sis! You don’t have to do this during our 13th annual ski vacation. We won’t see each other until I go to college. Wow, when we did the first one you three. I can’t believe it, the first time was December 12th 2002.”

As I walked towards the lounge room to watch television (as I do every morning as a nine year old) I was stopped by my mum who was sat outside the lounge room door, I asked “what are you doing” “shh, dad is doing his job interview” my mum whispered. My dad was in an interview with a person who worked for a company in Australia to get a job. I was so excited, I knew my dad would get the job because he is very smart and he was the only one interviewed by the company because he had the best CV. That’s how good my dad is. After a couple of hours my dad had finished and we were aloud in to the lounge room to talk with him and to just be nosey. The first thing my dad said was “we’re moving to Australia” of course I was ecstatic but, Cai wasn’t exactly buzzing over the idea. For the next few days my dad said to not tell a soul as nothing was finalised yet, but I knew he was lying so me being Dylan, I went and told all of my friends but only the ones I had 100% of my trust in, but after all none of them believed me anyway so it

It happened after school on June 8th, 2011, a Wednesday. There were no clouds in the sky and the sun was blazing. It was so hot that our neighbors were swimming in an inflatable pool in front of the apartment. I was inside watching them and I wanted to go swimming as well, but our neighbors didn’t like us. Our mother and father wanted us to do it, probably because they wanted to do drugs like they used to, or still do. I don’t know. I still don’t understand why they did drugs. I stopped watching because it was like torture. Minutes later the cops came in and said that we had to leave. I was struggling not to cry, but I couldn’t help it. I burst into tears and hugged my father for unbeknownst to me, the last time ever. I don’t even remember saying anything to my mother. This doesn’t make sense to me because my father did a lot worse things to me than my mother. We were then put into a grey van and driven to our new house, which turned out to be our forever

It was May 17th, 2011, it was a normal school day when my brother and I were told that my mom called to say that she was picking us up early. I was anxious, wondering why we were going home early and breaking our usual routine. When my mom came to get us, the first thing that I noticed was that she didn’t greet us with her usual smile. I was 9 years old, very observant, but not able to sense what was to come. We got into the car, when I asked my mom where we were going hoping