Teaching and Preaching

On a lighter note, I had a very good weekend with the 2nd year ETOL students.  I've always loved sharing my passions with others, promoting change, and otherwise making a difference.  How lucky am I that I get paid to teach people about how to play safe in the snow?  Ha!

Everything that happened on the trip was a learning experience, watching people interact, watching people learn, watching people improve their skills, watching people smile, laugh, and grow.  Several events are of particular merit.

The first night during beacon practice I found myself put on the spot to remember and regurgitate 15 names in rapid succession, after which we went directly into transceiver practice.  As I made my rounds to the different groups, I realized just how much I was able to offer these people, and deliver it in a way that not only makes sense, but is easy to understand.


Dinner that night was another amazing phenomenon.  I expected a typical enjoyable jam session, but I found myself playing cribbage and being distracted by the smoothest, purest, fullest, most beautiful voice that I think I have ever heard.  Literally the topic of discussion between Ian and I for an entire 2 days.  It was particularly entertaining because none of the students had a clue what we were talking about when we mentioned honey, vanilla yoghurt, toucans, and the northern lights all in one sentence.  If you can imagine, it was like honey dripping into vanilla yoghurt off of the wings of a butterfly above an alpine lake in Shangri La under an azure sky.

Moving on, I particularly enjoyed standing from above preaching to the students about proper snow-pit profile and test techniques.  Totally nitpicky stuff, but very important nonetheless.

Ian performed the whole weekend while carrying a portable IV unit of antibiotics for his infected elbow.

And I got some good photos of happy people playing in the snow!