Skiing for the first time!

I Went for skiing on Sunday. Was great fun. Out of the two types of skiing: Downhill and cross-country, downhill was more fun. A ropeway/lift takes you to the snowhill and you come down skiing up from there as if there is no gravity! Cross-coutnry style is to be done with a stick and you've got to apply force to move ahead with stick. I went up by myself and fell several times :-) however then I got a trainer called Michalis. He taught me and Kesu all the basics of standing still even on a slope, how to give direction by NOT tilting your skis but lifting it and always keeping the two skis parallel to each other. I did that what they usually do in skiing tests: Come down from a slope without a stick and duck to get through 3 feet high markers made out of sticks! That was a test I passed easily, although there were a lot of flying beauties around me to distract ;) However, applying brakes was no kid's play for me...I erred several times and fell too just after applying brake :D The simple funda of brakes while skiing called Snow-Plow is that when u're coming down from a slope merge your fronts of ski to make an A or Capital Lambda! If you are going up the hill make a V by merging your backsides of skis. Remember that skis should NEVER touch each other...and the A and V are to be made with open corners. Michalis, our trainer and his girlfriend kept saying 'Bravo' meaning 'well-done' in Greek and Italian (I had watched an Italian movie 'Life is Beautiful' where they keep saying Bravo as encouragement!) The skiing apparatus cosists of hard and long boots of my size of 10, a pair of skis on which shoes fit in and a pair of sticks to accelerate. Although I thought initially that sticks are to be used for deceleration..but they aren't. It's recommended to go there wearing waterproof lower, waterproof upper and puffy jackets; although I did all my skiing in Jeans :P and jacket. From the initial ways of 'topple over and bury your head in snow' to practising 'snow-plow' to stop, I guess I learnt something while skiing! At least how to stop...and now I have lost the reason to fall over and embrace a good-looking gal and say "Sorry, first time!" ;)