Whistler, the Brio House and Australia Day.

My house

For the majority of my 7 weeks in Whistler I'm staying in the Pro-ride house in Brio (Pro-ride being the people running the snowboard training I'm doing). I got here late Thursday night and met the existing residents, most on a 12 week course. "Oh, thank God - another adult!" was the welcome from Jamal, the only other guy over 30. The rest of the kids in the house were between 18 and 22 but seemed like a decent bunch. Couple of Canadians, Brits and Dutch and also a bunch of Australians. It's pretty much like being in uni halls again. On Friday night modified the house beer pong to the more lethal 1 cup 1 shot version, had a night out in Whistler and I beat Dutch David in a dance off. Apparently.

First impressions of Whistler are pretty good. I've got a week of getting used to the place before the Pro-ride course begins, and there's a ton of bars and restaurants, some doing food (that's surprisingly good) for 5 bucks a meal. I headed up the mountain for the day with a few of the guys from the house, and whilst the conditions are very average, the parks that we headed for are pretty awesome, with by far the biggest jumps I've ever seen. Some great tree runs about, and plenty of sunshine. Canadians are awesome by the way. Unbelievably helpful and friendly - the lifties all smile and chat to you as they're cleaning snow off the seats for you and couldn't be more helpful - it's very different to France! They also say awesome a lot.

This thing is an Inukshuk. There's a few of them around Whistler. Awesome!

They really love fairly lights here. They're awesome

There's a ridiculous number of Australians in Whistler. They're everyhere! Far outnumbering any other nationality here (including Canadians). To cap things off Tuesday was Australia Day which saw countless mangled Aussies on the mountain with painted faces wearing bikinis and Aussie flags. Some girls had dressed up too. I had been introduced to Australia Day the night/morning before at the Brio house. About 3am the music in the house starts blasting out, and I get up to find Callum (Aussie) and Deavon (wants to be Aussie) stood on the sofas in their underwear twerking. Callum slurryly explained something about this Aussie tradition with a song called Eagle Rock - whenever it comes on every proper bloke is honour bound to drop his pants and dance in his boxers. Oh well, when in Rome...