Ticket to Florida!

Today I'm extremely excited, because I finally have my plane tickets to go to Florida. I will be leaving on December 5th and will arrive at around 18.30 local time in Florida, even though this is still a month away, I'm overjoyed. Just like last year in the winter, I will going to Florida without my family and thus be spending some holidays and my 18th birthday without them. Luckily I will be adopted for a month by the wonderful Hof family! I will be spending the holidays with them and they are kind enough to let me live and ski in their paradise, I cannot wait. The day I will be arriving is a national holiday in the Netherlands. It's originally a party for younger kids, similar to Christmas, with presents and great seasonal food. We will be doing presents paired with a poem on that day. It's great to get straight into celebrating after a long day of travelling. It will also force me to stay awake and adapt to local time straight away. Where last year I was staying 2 weeks, since that's the length of our Christmas holiday, this year I will be going for 4 weeks and I'm super stoked. Little bonus is that I have a direct flight, so a lot less stress than last time, also adding that now, I've done it before. I will go back the 30th of December and arrive in the Netherlands on the 31st, so I can go straight into celebrating the end of the year, this time at home, since last year I spent new years in Florida too.

I also got some less exciting new this week when I went to the hospital for a check up on my ear. I had thought that there was a chance that the hole in my eardrum was closed and I could start skiing again. That would have been great news, even though it is literally freezing. However, not only was the hole not closed, it was also not a millimeter smaller than after the crash. It had shown no sign of healing, though it also wasn't infected, which is a silver lining. Our hope is that it was due to the fact that I had a cold in the time between my check ups and thus we'll give it another 3 weeks to start healing. If it is not closed or at least almost closed by then, we have to see what other measures we have to take. I worry that it won't be closed in the time left before I go to Florida. I would definitely still ski, but I would have to wear extra protection and I will run the risk of an infection due to the lake water. However, after Florida it will have a lot of time to heal, since I won't be able to ski a lot until the new season starts.

I'm very excited for next week when the NWWB is hosting its event, which I spoke about in the last blog. I will be finishing my sponsoring information before then and hopefully meet some interested parties there!