Greetings y'all
At last, another blog post will make it to being published. Currently I'm trying to rest to recover from general stifness and what's probably a mild concussion - how that happened will be told later on. I hope you are doing better than I am right now, and enjoy reading :)
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During the first months of 2026 there were a lot of winter-related activities in Forst St. John. One of them was an ice sculpture exposition, which also included an artificial mountain for sledding, a fire performance (both figuratively and literally) and the burning down of a massive ice tower.
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On long weekends and during spring break they had "Movie for a Toonie" at a place called The Lido Theater. Together with my hostsister and once also another friend, I ended up going three times. The first time the movie had something to do with a kangeroo but I forgot the title, the second one was The Princess Bride, the third and last one was Wall-E. Afterwards we'd usually go somewhere for a snack and a drink.
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There was one other time we went to the Lido Theater, then it was because there was a Youth Hangout with (video) games, life music, food and fun.
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One Friday, we went to Mathews Park for some outdoor skating during Outdoor Education. The way the city makes an ice rink in the park is by digging the path out of the snow, and flooding it with water which then freezes. That way, there was a beautiful icetrack among the trees.
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Since summer is getting closer there were some days that the temperature was warm, going up to -7°C and once even to +5°C! So you know what that meant, time to leave winter jackets at home when going out for an icecream.
Unfortunaly those alternating temperatures also meant that the massive amounts of snow (that sometimes still increased overnight) melted only to refreeze, resulting in roads covered in neck-breaking ice and/or undrinkable slush.
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Throughout the entirity of spring break there was free swimming at the indoor pool. My hostsister and me decided to go last Wednesday. While I was immeadiately happily splashing around, my hostsister was less of a fan of this particular pool. Or at least that was until she discovered the steam room. From then on, she was steaming like the rice she loves to eat while I was swimming laps. All the activity made us rather hungry so afterwards we treated ourselves with a big meal at a nearby McDonalds.
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As international students, we got the opportunity to go on a skitrip. We were supposed to go a few weeks ago, but the busdriver broke his leg the evening before, so it got moved to yesterday (which was the second Thursday of spring break). Way before we went, we had to fill out a form. Mostly to be aware of the dangers and stuff, but also to indicate if we were going to ski or snowboard and if we needed lessons for that. Since I couldn't do either and I thought snowboarding was way cooler, I had indicated to do that, praying that I'd learn fast enough so I could go down the actual mountain. When we finally arrived at Powder King (the ski place), it turned out that due to unaligned planning we were only getting 10 minutes of lessons instead of 60. The instructors teached us how to not fall over, stop by turning and then left us to fend for ourselves. I however wanted to go down the actual mountain so I practiced going down the little training hill, gaining confidence, a bit of skill and a bruised tailbone. (Falling right on the latter was a lot more painful than I'd ever imagine it could be.) After a while I could stop without fully crashing and deemed myself ready for the big job. Obviously I shouldn't do my first run by myself, so I waited for my experienced friends who were by then eating their lunch. Eventually we got up with the skilift, which for a first time ever was totally not scary at all. Once at the top of the route I started to have my doubts, as it was supposed to be green, but damn was it steep. Everything added I think I actually snowboarded for at least fifty meters (here's a gentle reminder that this was my first time even standing on a snowboard). Slowly but surely I regained confidence, until it was smacked out of me when I fell and hit my head. Somehow, during actually sliding down the mountain on my snowboard, I had accidentally managed to turn up to the point where my back was facing downhill. Then my board probably got stuck behind a tiny ledge because suddenly I fell backwards with my head taking the worst of the impact. Thanks to the helmet I was wearing it, luckily didn't knock me out and even my vision remained intact. It is safe to say that though I went down the entirety of the path with my snowboard, I wasn't necessarily standing on it the last few metres. The view was wonderful however, so even though I am now entirely stiff and suffering form neck pain, it was all by all not that bad.
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That was it for now. I hope you have a great day or night :). As for myself, I'm going to rest some more in the hopes that I'll be better by monday when school starts.
Recovering regards, Cupcake