Powder Monkey

My ski season, days three and four. Perfect and perfecter. Zermatt rocks my ski socks off. Actually, it rocks my ski socks on, because rocking them off would mean I wouldn't be able to ski. Rocking my ski socks on would be the first step to rocking my ski boots on, at which point I'd have my skis over my shoulder and be halfway to the lift before you knew it.
Saturday was cold, foggy, and snowing. The light was flatter than flat and the snow softer than soft. I couldn't see any contours in the snow in front of me, and I was going pretty fast and hit a bump. I did an awesome double ejection over my tips did some sort of belly flop-roll into super soft squishy snowand got snow all up the back of my jacket and down my pants and in my goggles. It was sick. Best wipe out I've had in ages. So that was Saturday. Then Sunday the sun came out, and things only got better.
Theres really nothing like having a boot-top wind-blown powder run all to yourself with an awesome almost-360-degree view first thing in the morning, when the sun is shining, you're standing on top of the world looking at the backside of the Matterhorn from the Italian side, and there are snowy peaks spreading out as far as you can see in every direction. For all of you who think the view from Rendezvous is nice, you haven't been up here. And then you start skiing, first down perfect corduroy and rip like none other, and its one of those moments you want to just let go and shout "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" at the top of your lungs, but can't because you're skiing so hard you are out of breath. And then you come around the side of the mountain and hit that big, long, wide, somewhat steep patch of powder off the side of the trail, and burn your quads so much your legs are screaming for a break, and your heart and head are screaming for more and cursing that red fence that directs you back onto the corduroy. The best part is, the wind is blowing at just the right angle and speed that the tracks fill in, so by the time you get down to the bottom and wait for the gondola, and get back up to the top, you've got another perfect run of freshies on the same line you skied 45 minutes earlier. Yeah, the snow wasn't quite as light and fluffy as Colorado's finest champagne powder, but as far as November goes, it was great.
Its hard to go from a weekend so perfect and powder-liscious to being forced to quit at 1:15 on Sunday to get on a train and then a bus and come back to school to go to study hall and do homework. You know you've got an addiction to snow when the sine waves in your math homework start looking like ski tracks. That addictive, white, crystalline powder has so much control over my mind...

Snowball

I'd pack up all my hopes and fears
Those icy flakes of frost
And mix it with the frozen tears
And the memories I've lost.
If I thought that I'd be seeing you any time soon,
I'd pack it all between my mittened hands
And throw that snowball to the moon.

Snow angels are my thoughts transformed
When snowmen line suburban streets:
The aftermath of my winter storms
Melting in the afternoon heat.
If I thought that we'd share a blizzard any time soon,
I'd stop kicking ice chunks down the road
And punt those snowballs to the moon.

winter wonderland

The great thing about living in a small school where you know almost everyone, where the buildings are all spread out and you have to walk somewhere between all your classes, is that when its snowing, break (aka passing period) becomes one big snowball fight. Walking to the cafeteria and walking back becomes a snowball fight.
The world is bright and white and fluffy and the flakes just stopped coming down a few minutes ago. At the moment I'd guess we're at about a foot. The ski area is opening this weekend, and the skier inside me is sort of happy that I didnt end up getting to go to Copenhagen. Of course, I would have rather gotten to go back and see my friends, but its not all bad. I'll get to slaughter all my friends in a really long snowball fight, and drink hot chocolate by the fire downstairs in the lounge, and maybe go out for fondue and chocolate mousse, and most importantly, I'll get to sleep, because I definitely haven't been getting enough of that lately. I really want to curl up in bed with a good book, and then get distracted and stare out the window at the beauty of a frosted world, enjoying the fact that while other things might not be so super stellar (homework really), I'm so freaking lucky.

RC Cola and Moon Pies

I don't understand how I can be the only one in my math class who hasn't done calculus, derivatives, and integrals, and yet nobody else in my class has had RC cola in class. Yup, we're doing matrices. From the very beginning. Again. I really hate how IB curriculums don't line up when they are supposed to. And of course, it gets worse. IAs. I'm pretty sure I'm doing one of last year's ones again. The matrix powers... AHHHHHH! thank goodness I finished my TOK journal otherwise I think i'd go completely insane. Oh wait, I already am. hmph.

Melting

The weather warmed up a little. Its been sleeting now on and off for a few hours. Its supposed to warm up tomorrow and then get back to snowing on tuesday. I must say, the sleet tonight and tomorrow are going to be hell. I have so much homework to get done. I have a cultural report on my trip to Florence, which at the moment, I'm somewhere between a third and halfway done with and on page 14 typed. And then I have another essay for TOK, an essay for english, and a french project all due tomorrow. I really shouldn't be online. Too bad for homework... except s***... its all in the classes that my grade is so close to popping up on... GAH!

I <3 The Snow Gods/Goddesses

Its still snowing. I'm in that serene, peaceful, content, untouchable mood. Not even homework can kill it.
By the way, I'm not really sure why my blog seems so depressing because my life is really quite amazing. Maybe I'm just more likely to write when I'm having a slightly bad day. I've been under a lot of IB stress over the past two weeks, so maybe thats had an influence. Things are picking up though, and after Monday things shouldn't be so tough.
Last night I went for a walk with two of my friends. We were all bundled up, in warm jackets and hats and fuzzy mittens, and we made snow angels and had a snowball fight. Then we went and stood under a street lamp and stared upwards. It you've never looked straight up into a snowstorm at night where all the snowflakes are illuminated against the inky blackness of the sky, you should try it. When you look across at a snowstorm, you see everything from the side, linearly. You see each flake falling from top to bottom, just the way the world works. But when you stand underneath and look up, its like you stop time. You see top and bottom layered on top of each other. The flakes don't fall in the same direction, you see them swirl and float, you can see the wind, no matter how little of it there is, at it changes the direction that the flakes move. It looks like millions of little fish, some changing direction together, others going on their own, all tiny little dashes of white against a black backdrop. It looks like a million shooting stars all at once. And then you stick out your tongue, part your lips a little, and feel the frozen water molecules tingle a little as they melt in your mouth, you close your eyes for a moment and listen to the flakes hitting the ground and feel them melt on your eyelids. You smell the air, because snow has that distinct smell you can't find anywhere else. Maybe its not so much a smell, but its a quality you can only pick up by breathing in snowy air slowly through your nose. And then you go stand by a car when its really really cold, and smell that deisel-ey ester mixed with the icy-ness of the air. Most people hate that smell/sensation/whatever it is, but for me it reminds me of my ski area, the buses, getting there early in the morning before an awesome day of skiing. Its a feeling thats akin to licking a cold metal pole, with your tongue just sticking a little and not getting TOTALLY stuck to it to the point where it really hurts to pull it off. I really am walking in a winter wonderland.
SNOW IS JOY. SNOW IS PEACE. SNOW IS LOVE. SNOW IS LIFE.

SNOW!!!

ITS SNOWING!!! In the words of one of the other Sarahs here: "WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Its been coming down all day off and on, in that sort of pellet-ey dippin-dot kind of snow. So far theres about an inch accumulated, but its supposed to keep snowing all weekend! Its going to make it nearly impossible for me to do what I need to do and focus on what I need to do, but I don't really care. Its snow, snow means happiness, snow means skiing, skiing means happiness. Therefore Sarah=YAY!!

Sad Songs and Sketches

What do you do when you realize that how you feel for one thing can't change how you feel about another? What happens when you realize what you thought was all you wanted wasn't as great as you expected? How do you go back when so much has happened? You can't always pretend it never happened, there are some mistakes you have to accept. It's correcting them without making anything worse thats the tricky part. But how do you do it without hurting anyone? How do you do it without hurting yourself? Why do I have enough insight to know that in the long run, it will be worth it to do what I need to do? But what if I'm making the wrong decision? What if I know I'm not? Why haven't people commented on my last five posts? Why do I care? Why do I keep bothering when there are more important things I should be doing? Or when there are more fun things to do?
I've gotten really into sketching lately. I thought I had no talent with drawing, but someone showed me some great techniques There also aren't enough things in my room that are cool to draw, so I'm sketching from old photos on my computer (and taking pictures of my sketches of those photos and putting them back on my computer). Brownie points (and maybe an extra bar of chocolate at Christmas) to anyone other than Hannah who can send me an email telling me who's eye this is (and even more if you can tell me what picture its from, although I'm sure nobody else has spent nearly as many minutes looking at that photograph as I have). It doesn't really look like said person's eye. But as I progress with my drawing, the other eye, the nose, the mouth, the hair, maybe, just maybe it will become more clear who it is. When that happens though, I won't be able to post it here. I'll only share it with certain people. In all reality, if you read this, you probably are one of those people I'll share it with, but there are the few exceptions.
I should really get back to my homework. I really don't want to. But I want to go to sleep more, so that means doing my homework so I can sleep. Really, what I want to do is sketch some more, write in my journal, and read a book, curl up on my bed with a nice cup of chai, in my fuzzy pajamas and listen to relaxing sad songs, then go to sleep.

Mushrooms and Religion

There's this book called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (if you ever get your hands on a copy of it, let me know!) that one of my teachers was talking about a few weeks ago. I was procrastinating (go figure) and decided to look it up online and came across this article that is really interesting. Check it out if you are bored and want to hear some really crazy stuff about religion.

Finished

One day, Sarah decided that school was taking over her life. She was opposed to the idea of homework. She thinks that teachers should do more in class and give us less work to do out of class. The realization that, with homework, she was working much, much more than forty hours a week made her slightly annoyed, especially when coupled with the fact that she was only getting about 24 hours of sleep during the school week. That one fifth of my week spent sleeping, as opposed to one third, which is what is recommended (eight hours a night!) So Sarah is tired. Sarah has been to tired to go stargazing, and hasn't seen an incinerating bit of cosmic dust in a long time. Sarah no longer knows which planets are which when she looks up at the sky, and she can't remember most of the constellations. She hasn't listened to her astronomy podcast in a few months, and she misses her hobby. Unfortunately, she isn't let out of the dorm after 7:30 on school nights, so no stargazing for me, except on weekends. She misses the stars. She misses keeping track of the moon. She misses being super nerdy, especially when she can't keep her GPA up to her nerdy standards.

I finished my presentation. Presented it. My teacher said it was "good." Whatever that means. She's a really harsh grader so I guess that just plain good is good enough. I have to wait until Monday to find out my score. So now is when my weekend really begins. I get to go skiing tomorrow, but that means finding someone with a key who can let me into the ski room to get my skis. Preferably before too late tonight so I can sharpen my edges. And then I have to find people who are going that are my level that I can ski with. Maybe today I'll go for a run, and practice my flute and take a nap.

Love, Sarah

Almost

I'm almost there. I just have to practice my IB English Oral a few times, iron out the kinks, and go to sleep. Then I have to wake up, go to my English teacher, and stare past her head at the sexy poster of Aragorn on the wall and go through my presentation one more time, just with her taking notes while I do it. It doesnt sound that intimidating. But the thing is, I hate rehearsing out loud. I just can't bring myself to talk to my computer screen about the use of color to contrast time periods in The Handmaid's Tale. And I don't want to distract my roommate, who is much farther behind on hers than I am. *sigh* I should really practice instead of updating.
I get to go skiing on Sunday. That is really what's been motivating me this week. If I get through tomorrow morning and all goes well, I deserve to go skiing. If tomorrow morning doesn't go well, then I'll need to go skiing to bring my spirits back up. Either way, I want it to be Sunday morning already. I miss my skis. . . but tomorrow I get to get them out of the ski shed, and maybe I'll sharpen the edges. *yay*