Most of the Northwood Alpine ski team is at a training camp in Sweden. Northwood/NYSEF ski team member and Mirror staff writer Maris Van Slyke took some time out of her study hall to send this update:
After a nice 24 hour travel day, we arrived at our destination of Kabdalis, Sweden with a beautiful sunset. As soon as we got off the bus the owner came up to JP and told us to wait to bring our bags to our rooms because the FIS race on the hill had 7 of the top 20 slalom skiers in the world racing in it, some of whom have won more than one World Cup.
We got the honor to watch probably the coolest awards ceremony any of us has ever seen, including a fire eater, reindeer, and a Sami (Native of Northern Sweden) girl singing a song her mother wrote. We then had what was unanimously called “the best food we’ve ever had,” and “food that is way better than Northwood’s food,” since we got here. The winners of the race got a rack of Reindeer horns, and 10,000 SEK, which is equal to about $1,000 in the US.
While we have been here, we have been training alongside the Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, and French national team members.
Yesterday morning we had a power outage that shut down the entire region of Sweden for a few hours. The crazy part about it – It became more dark in a place that is already dark almost 24/7. By 3pm, the sky is already black, and we haven’t seen the sun since the day we got here.
All photos by Ms. Marcy Fagan.
