Pennsylvania (New York, actually) Skiing

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. I had a great time skiing on saturday. the snow was decent (although measured at times in the inch to half-an-inch to none range in certain locations), the slopes themselves were't bad (but not close to the Mount Rose proportions or steepness), and thte skiing itself was fun. I ended up hanging with one of the upperclassmen from the rugby team that consistantly reminds me of Mark Leonard and a friend of his. We ended up going just about all over the mountain for about 5 1/2 hours. This was a night skiing trip, but there were times that I forgot that it was night. That is one thing that this resort (Holiday Valley, in New York somewhere) has that is above and beyond anything that I have been to in CA - the night skiing. Most of the resort is open at night, and it is very well lit. All of the terrain parks, and probably 85-90% of the standard runs are completely open. Starting around 4:30 and ending around 10:30, theres about an entire day's skiing after a standard resort closes. I rented skis, and I got a pair of parabolic skis. WOW! Those things practically turn for you! I had heard that they were much better, but Goodness Gracious!! They were fun - making hard cuts and quick turns was almost simple. I'm glad that I learned to ski on straight skis, because they doubtless made me better - but the parabolics are fun!!

Anyway - that was yesterday. The first week of classes was good. It was kindof surprising - most of the classes seemed to get into the cource materials in the first day - although I didn't have any quizzes the first day or homework due the second, like some of my friends did. I think I will enjoy the Linear Algebra class (It will help that I have already seen most of the material that will be covered in the class), the Physics class (but not as fun and easy as last semester - electricity and magnetism are more confusing then simple applications of Newton's laws), and C++ (but the first couple of weeks will be difficult to sit through - I look forward to learning about C++ itself, but this is a class for those who havnt programmed before, and many of the topics that are common in all programming languages I already have a pretty good handle on [but the class is using the Professional edition of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 {sorry to any microsoft haters that are reading this - but their programming tools are supurb!} which I am glad to be able to install and use]). Civ won't be too bad - it will be more interesting then last semester. Biblical Revelation is the name of the class - I get to read through the entire bible in 4 months of class. Thats a big undertaking! My only complaint with that is it forces me to just read through it, without much time for thinking about it too deeply. Intro to engineering will probably be boring, but not too difficult. It will most likely be a blind memorization of facts. Fitwell will be better than last semester - no circuit training. I don't understand - the other fitwell labs seem to have a competition to see how easy they can make there classes. The swimming, free weights, and mechanical weights instructors each insist that thier class is the easiest that we will have in our time at GCC. Circuit training, on the other hand, requires lots of very hard, strenuous exertion. Oh well. I shouldn't complain - I got an A for the circuit training, but it still irks me.

Whoever is reading this, thank you and (If I know you) I am remembering you and wishing I could come home more often to talk and play and have fun. Talk at you later!!

Jeremy