Back in the Purple Valley!

After a long voyage south from the winter wonderland that is MSA, the team is back in Williamstown and settling into the winter study routine of eating, sleeping, skiing, watching skiing, and maybe doing a little bit of studying in between. 

As other blog posts have shown, we had an absolutely fantastic week on snow in Quebec, despite all of Eli's apparent hopes for mud, sticks, and running shoes. I have been having an interesting time readjusting to US life and ski training, and have so far worn my pants backwards for workouts (the jury is still out on whether they were actually backwards or not), skied an entire classic workout in skate boots without realizing it, brought skate poles to a classic time trial, forgotten my phone in the van, and brought unscraped skis to practice not once, but twice. However, I'm slowly remembering how to bring the right equipment to practice, and I'm sure by the first carnival I will be skiing with everything in order. If not, at least I've had practice skiing with the wrong boots and poles. 

Other important news that came from MSA that I'm sure everyone has been waiting for: the girls did indeed win the van competition, as well as the dinner competition. 

Finally, I've been really enjoying getting to know my new teammates, and have learned important things, like that Nick Gardner likes to warm up for his L3 intervals wearing a helmet (no photos unfortunately), Elowyn Pfeiffer has trouble controlling burrito size, and Sonya Jampel goes to the gym wearing Danskos (see photos below). 

Elowyn and her mega-burrito. The girls team just cooks so well that she couldn't fit it all in her wrap. But she probably could have taken two tortillas, since we bought approximately 84 of them.

Sonya foam rolling in clogs. She calls this "skier-chic".

Here are some other snapshots of winter study lyfe here in the Purple Valley. We're getting pumped for the first carnival and are super inspired to rip it up after watching some awesome performances at US Nationals and in the Tour de Ski!

The boys team getting excited about watching Sophie Caldwell win on Tuesday!

Sweet projector set-up for prime TdS watching, courtesy of Eli and Jordan.

The following series of photos is of our reactions to Elowyn's masterful creation of ice cream sandwiches.

Me

Sonya-- not so psyched?

Eliza cannot control her excitement and love for ice cream.

Still not much snow in Williamstown, but we have managed to find some of the white stuff and have been skiing all week! I don't have any photos though, as we've been too busy taking advantage of on snow skiing while we have it.