Cataloochie ski trip

Just back from the trip and had a wonderful time. It was organised for the international students by the Baptist Student Ministry.

We left just after 12pm on Friday and got to our destination at 9pm although we did make a stop at Arbys for dinner and a couple of pit stops. One of which was a garage which had the most interesting drip coffee. I had the Cinnamon coffee cake as I am not brave enough to try chocolate banana, tiramisu or smores (chocolate and marshmallows on a pie crust). They also had syrup and powder to put in it too so we were all wide awake when we got to the church at 9.

There we stopped for more refreshments and met other baptist ministry students from other schools in Georgia. First we had to say where we were from and shout out our country so it could be put on the map. I was the only one from Scotland. Then an international students made a short speech to us about being ambitious which was nice. We then had another chance to mingle and grab more to eat.

We were then told to sit down so they could go over forms for the students skiing as they had to know name, address, weight, height and shoe size for everyone. Then the fun really started and we were all taught the Virginia Reel and a line dance! 200 people line dancing is pretty funny in itself but when they are from all over the world and have never line danced before, oh it was fantastic.

So after that we all went into the hotel and were put into rooms with 3 others. I stayed with a woman from Thailand, a girl from Japan and also a nice girl from the BCM who I know pretty well now and love to bits.
We woke up at a 6am after getting around 5 and a half hours sleep and had to be ready and in the van by 6.45am to get to the ski resort nice and early!

We all met in a large wooden lodge which had lots of picnic benches around. Everyone was given their tags and taken outside if they were going to ski and around 10/15 people stayed in the lodge. The BCM girl I stayed with, a woman from Turkey and I were approached by one of the men in charge of Cataloochie Ski Area and asked if we did want to ski. He has a certain amount of tickets he could give us for free as long as we kept quiet about it. So after having a wee think about it the 3 of us said yes please and made our way out. We collected our ski's and went to the beginners area. They took a group of 14 of us and we were taught the basics (although not all that well as I was still pretty awful).
I was out in the snow from around 8.30 to 11.30 maybe as I had fallen over enough and was quite uncomfortable with the beginners area being so busy making it terribly easy to crash into people.

I went back to the lodge and had lunch which was provided by the BCM and also Subway. Then after talking to a few people I decided to go for a little walk and take some photographs which I did with the lady from Turkey and a lady who is from Jordan.
The three of us spent most of the afternoon together and they are such fun interesting women. The scenery there was just stunning. It looked wonderful. The fake snow looked so real too.
I also bought myself a t-shirt. It is pretty cool.

At 4pm we had to be all packed up and ready to go. Which I was but of course the people on the slopes took a wee while. Then we hit the road again, stopped at Zaxbys this time for dinner (chicken fast food) and managed to get home at around 1.45am I think it was.
It was a little sad as I had met such nice people and really wanted to say a nice goodbye to everyone but we were all so tired and everybody just wanted to get straight to bed, including myself.
So I stayed in my jim jams until around 12.30pm and then thought I had best get up.