One: Pre-Departure
There are a few things you need to know about this trip before it starts. Firstly, it’s a graduation requirement at school, where we have to spend a week going on a trip that we sign up for with our peers. So if you don’t go on this trip, you can’t graduate (insane right?)

Secondly, this year is the first year post-pandemic when we could take a school trip overseas. So, a whole slew of activities was made available, such as skiing. I was ecstatic when I saw this as an option and prayed for days to get on the trip. The only problem was that we had an intricate process to sign up for it, considering there are 287 students in my grade and most of us wanted a few popular trips with around 20-40 spots available. This is where our pick number comes in.

Based on a random generator, I was assigned the 137th pick, which is just short of being halfway through the grade to choose. Furthermore, my friends had pick numbers after me, so we thought getting this trip would be impossible.

By sheer luck, everyone else was paranoid and opted for other trips instead, So my friends and I managed to get in on this ski trip to Japan. Mind you, this process started in November, so it meant that we had to wait three months until the week of fun would occur.

Two: The flight there
After leaving halfway through the school day on a Thursday, I frantically crammed all my winter clothes (it was a very limited collection) into my luggage and made my way to the airport. I sat at the restaurant counter and ordered a burger with my friend Shad, and we passed the time waiting for our other friends to arrive by discussing the impact of AI chatbots on our independent thinking, how political narratives are skewed in America, and his adventures in the Canadian wilderness. Our conclusion from all three topics (regardless of how serious) was that our collective human experience has the potential to be more than our perceived reality. basically, life is what we make of it. This seemed fitting to share because we knew this trip had the potential to be a whole lot of epic, but only if we saw to it.

This eagerness and hope I felt, unfortunately, soon turned sour when our red-eye flight resulted in the worst turbulence I had ever experienced. I woke up to the plane violently jolting sideways. My legs were shaking with the plane, and I gripped the armrests until my fingers turned white. My classmates and my teacher next to me were all also wide awake. I’m pretty sure a prayer was mumbled by someone in the middle of this as well. I’m not exaggerating when I say the flight attendant fell down in the aisle, and the food cart rolled forwards, almost toppling over someone.

All I could think about was whether my seatbelt was wrapped around my waist tight enough and whether we had to go into brace position at any moment. But luckily, exhaustion from my anxiety washed over me, and I drifted off to sleep when the turbulence slowed to slight, more minuscule bumps.

Three: Arrival and the days spent skiing
We arrived after a three-hour bus ride spent sleeping on each other’s shoulders. One of my classmates exclaimed “SNOW!!!” and we all woke up laughing because it was his first time seeing it in a while.

Our lodge was tucked away in the corner of a small street winding through the middle of the Japanese mountain range. I half expected to drive more to an area that’s more open, but we were literally staying on the side of a river that apparently flowed from Tokyo. We all had rooms on the second floor of the lodge, with shared bathrooms in the basement. There was a pool room, ski gear room, and an open dining area furnished with wooden bench tables. In short, I expected ‘cozy’ and it was.

After we all unpacked, we went snowshoeing! A bus dropped us off twenty minutes down the road, and we spent thirty minutes walking on an off-beaten path to the clearing, where the sun magically touched the tops of the mountains behind us. It wasn’t that cold either, which was a great welcome treat.

The next few days went by in a blur. It was all ski. We all woke up at 6 in the morning to my friend Carys’s obnoxious alarm. The girls and I would brush our teeth in the basement, get changed, and ready for breakfast. We developed a routine of suiting up after we ate, going on the bus, and carving down the slopes. Of course, along the way, we had some wipeouts. Regardless, the conditions were great. I was put in intermediate group A (the better one!) with a few friends, and we would try to get on the next hardest level slope each day with our instructor Sid, who was a twenty-something nomad from Portsmouth, England dedicated to “chasing the pow.

Four: Evening downtime and activities
After our days spent skiing and falling, we would either have downtime or an activity. Usually, my friend Shad and I would sit in the corner of the lodge to watch the Netflix golf series ‘Full Swing’ in our pajamas. Sometimes, we would play pool and foosball. One night, we had a traditional Japanese drumming class, and in the middle of the week, we had a soba-making class. I would look forward to downtime on the bus ride back from the mountains, probably because I could slurp down a hot cup of hot wheat tea while wrapped around a warm blanket.

Five: Trip takeaways
I learned a lot during this trip, like how to care for my bruised toe which I got from (irresponsibly) jumping off a cliff on skis. I learned how to be a better friend, patient group member, and considerate guest. I also learned to let loose a little more, to actually picture a life of adventure for myself like Sid - spent exploring the world and taking up a ski-instructor job in the future. I knew from the start time would fly by, but I didn’t realize that it would go by that fast. I guess I have this blog post to remember it, and friends to tell me, “Hey! remember that time you wiped out on our school trip and got a black toe?” at reunion years from now.

Our flight back was less turbulent physically, though it cannot be said about my fluctuating emotions. I was sad, then excited to go back, then worried about the work I had to do, then annoyed I had to sit squashed in the middle seat on a red-eye, and ultimately pissed when my next-seat neighbor spent most of the flight gossiping to the person behind us at 4 am. This was not my first flight without my parents, but I missed not being able to lean on my mom or have my dad and brother near me. All I could think then was wow. I need to get used to this. I am really living an adult life now being the middle-seat stranger.