Cross Country Skiing

I ment to post this a week ago but haven't gotten to it until now. The week has been busy, but also the Olympics has been on so it had sucked up any extra time I've had :)

It seems that our Czech friends have a different sport that they do during ever season. In the spring people start to run and hike again, summer is a time for cycling, and in the fall people go on walks to gather mushrooms and get their final sunny walks and bike rides in before the long winter. Swimming is something people do all year round since there is an indoor pool. And in the winter people ski. There are very few people that I know who don't ski cross country or downhill (or both). But this makes sense since all kids learn to ski at school (that is if their parents do not teach them earlier). At around age 13 the Policka schools take their students on "lyzak" or ski course for a week. This was surprising to me last year because I could never see my class of 215 students being taken a week long trip to the mountains to learn how to ski, however class sizes are a lot smaller here due to the way the school system is set up (only 30 kids).

I really enjoy that families are active together year round. It is important for children to see their parents hiking and skiing, and their grandparents biking and picking mushrooms, because it instills a lifesyle into them. Growing up my family was rather active. My brother and I would play football and baseball out in our yard with our parents, go for bike rides and walks and cross country ski in the winter. And those are the things that I remember. Sure, I also have good memories of sitting in the car on the way to vacation and spending time camping and on the beach, but since my parents were active when I was younger I do believe it is why I enjoy biking, hiking, swimming and skiing. One of my stongest memories from childhood was when my family went night skiing. It was a cold night, without wind, and a full moon lit the sky. We put on our headlamps and skied around the field behind our house. Everything was crisp and sparkled in the moonlight.

So when out friend Hana asked me if I wanted to go cross country skiing with her I was really excited. She was hesitant to ask, since she was unsure if I had ever skied before, but after learning that I use to ski when I was younger her worry became that I would be too fast for her! (go figure) I assured her that I wasn't very fast and that I hadn't been on cross country skies since I was 15 so she had nothing to worry about. We ended up skiing for about 3 hours all around Policka, and had a great time.

Jeremy wasn't able to go with Hana and I since he had been invited to go "motorskiing" with our other friends, Honza and Lukas. For the pictures and videos that I saw, I know they had a good time. They also took Jeremy on his first cross country skiing adventure!