I am going skiing on Saturday!
Or perhaps I should pretend to be Australian and say I am going to the snow. This strikes me as a kind of weird way to phrase it. It is not something you would say in any self-respecting European country, or even in some parts of NZ, because snow is that stuff that is right here, look! on the ground! and what do you mean, you are going there? Snow is not a place to go; it is a thing that is. (cold.) But I guess in Australia where all the snow huddles up in the mountains, it makes sense. And I guess it can include more than skiing, which is kind of useful. Like, I am going to the snow to snowboard. Or I am going to the snow to slide down hills on my bum. Or I am going to the snow to drink red wine and look out the window of the drinking chalet. (There IS going to be a drinking chalet, right?).
So I am going to the snow. Oh yes!
Bit by bit, I have assembled a whole ski-bunny set of clothing and accessories from random members of my department. My skipants smell like the Head of Department. My gloves are the size of Pseudonymless Adjunct's hands. My goggles are smart racing ones from a smart ski-racing fellow student. I feel like the trip is turning into a joint department effort.
I probably owe it to them to drink a lot of red wine.
(I'm not sure this entry really deserves the label "linguistics", but I did whine about Australian English up the top there, so I'm going to say it counts.)
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Woo hoo!
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5 Comments:
You know, not everyone can say that their skipants smell like their department head.
In california, people say "going up to the snow." There it makes more sense as the only snow literally is up - either up north, or up in the mountains.
I really like my word veri today: houtapit. say it, it's funny. What's it mean, o yea, thou greatest linguist?
Hey! Our Head of Department is quite dapper!
Although, having said that, many of the others are indeed a big heap of stereotype. When I told my boss that Styleygeek was buying new outfits to lecture in, his puzzled response was, "You mean they're going to make her wear shoes or something? That's pretty harsh."
When we had a Swedish guy living with us, he went skiing, here in Japan. He came back flabbergasted. Everybody else there had been wearing the most up-to-date and fashionable skiwear, and had the most fashionable and up-to-date skiing equipment, and fooling around on the beginner slopes. He was wearing tatty old jeans with long underwear, and hired some skis, and was, as you can imagine, the only person there who actually knew how to ski.
Is this your first time skiing? I have never tried it myself, but I'm sure I'd be brilliant. At falling flat on my face.
That's a great story, Badaunt.
It's not my first time, but I'm still hugely incompetent. I've always been with good skiers in the past, and they have refused to let me "waste" my money on lessons, because "it's easy!". Hence I have never really got the hang of the whole stopping thing.
This time I'm going to take a lesson. (Unless I have miraculously developed some mad skiing skillz in the meanwhile.)
Talk to me! (You know you want to!)