More on Vancouver

Two days into my term, and I'm already realising how clinically insane the workload I've taken upon myself is. So its quite obvious that I have to spend time blogging, I mean I was too busy all the other terms when I wasn't killing myself to blog so yeah, why not start now.

But more importantly, there was a city. And as previously mentioned, it was beautiful.

Snow

Snow is great fun, while its still snow. And that's the key bit. The first time you see the white fluffy stuff, especially when its covering fir trees in a fashion you only thought was present in Hollywood Dreams and Christmas Movies, you freak out and behave like a kid. This mostly involved Harneja and I running about and throwing snowballs at each other. Technically, he was 18 and still underage in British Columbia, so had an excuse. I was the senior statesman. Okay, not, but still you can't help but behave a tad bit immature when you see snow for the first time. Its just so fun.
After playing around a while, a few realisations dawn upon you. The first is that snow is only light and fluffy when you don't clump it up. When you pack it nice and tight and into a snowball, it gets both heavy and quite solid. Thus, beaming someone on the head with said object is not a good idea.
The second reason why its not a good idea is a little bit about the chemistry of the matter in question. Snow is a very fancy version of this fun substance called water, and as obvious as that sounds you don't quite realise it till the snow melts, forming very cold water. Down you shirt. Very disturbing.

Skiing

So, after white people got over the whole excitement of snow, they had to figure a way to move around in it. Some smart chap thought it would be a great idea to slap two very slippery smooth sticks to your feet, shove two completely ineffective poles in your arms for the purpose of breaking (yeah right) and steering and tell you do go down a mountain.
This is while a very cool, but remarkably stupid way of transport. First, there's no way to get back up the slope, because skis are completely incapable of moving upwards, unless you're some muscle bound maniac who can do a Yeti act and literally climb up a slope with skis on. But more importantly, the great method of breaking known as "Bend the Knees" doesn't work. Not for first timers, anyhow. I bent my knees. I almost crossed my skis. But no, I was still going down the slope. Thus, you're left with exactly one avenue to break. Its called falling down on your ass. So that's what I did, and it worked remarkably well.

Sadly, my life doesn't leave me much time to write on further today. A last update on the place's food (you can't do a travelogue without food now, can you?) will follow.