I just finished a wonderful week of skiing at Big White near Kelowna in the BC Interior. The climate is a little colder than the coastal range near Vancouver. The snow is light and plentiful. The runs were long and varied. There were steep bowls with fresh powder snow, moguls, long giant slalom type of runs, and skiing through the trees.

I went with my son, daughter-in-law, her mother and our three grandchildren. We stayed in a chalet we rented right on the hill. In fact all the accommodation at Big White is “ski in ski out.”

The temperature varied between minus 5 and 0 Centigrade. We had two days of blue sunshine and three days of variable visibility and snow. But we need the snow so that was all right.

In the evenings my son and I played a high quality of outdoor pick-up hockey on an outdoor rink. We also took the whole family including grandchildren and grandparents for night-time tubing down a groomed tubing hill.

The grandparents had time to spoil their grandchildren and we had lovely meals at our chalet every evening, with plenty of help from all. New Year’s eve we had our champagne and went to bed early in order to be first on the slopes the next day.

I did not have time to think about language learning except when I sat beside some snowboarders from Korea who were studying English in Kelowna.