Never too late to try

So yesterday I finally made a decision to finally go snowboarding. I have grown up in Northern Alberta my entire life and I have yet to ever go skiing or snowboarding. I'd like to blame the adults in my life and the path I chose to take. I have been swimming more than half my life and due to that I have never been able to do anything that could risk me getting hurt. I only have a few months left in my collegiate career of swimming and I decided to go for it. So I asked my friend Julia to go with me and teach me. She was probably the best person to go with because she had only gone twice in her life and so she knew what to do but wouldn't leave me in snowbanks. So we arrived at the hill at 12:50 pm and we had practice at 4 so we figured we had tons of time! When we went to purchase our lift-ticket the lady at the front desk informed us that the hill closed at 2pm. We decided to still go and give it a try. The hill, Nitehawk, is not anywhere near a good hill. The snow is hard and frozen, the people are mean and it's apparently small (not to a beginner though!). So on my very first attempt I actually went quite a ways but I got scared at the speed I was gaining that I fell hard just out of fear. Julia told me that the bunny hill was not a good place to learn because you have to walk up every time you make it down so that was out of the question. I instead had to learn on the real hill...but taking Easy Street. Easy Street took me 40 minutes to get down my very first time. I think I fell over 20 times, got stuck and helped out by others twice and almost cried from pain once. Finally the last turn was there and the chair lift was in sight. I was so happy that I took off for the lift and got caught up with pros swerving around me because I fell smack in the middle of where all the runs merge...I thought I was going to die. Julia saved me and then the next challenge was upon me....the chair lift. I was not impressed with the whole system and I held Julia's hand when the chair came swinging around the turn and swept me off the ground. Once I was on I learned to hold my board so my ankle didn't get twisted. Then Julia dropped the bomb on me and told me the getting on was the easy part it was the getting off that was the hardest!! I got so nervous as the top approached that I started to panic that the chair would hit me and then the following passengers would run me over. Julia assured me that the operators were watching and would stop the lift if we got in trouble...the girl was not watching. As we went to get off we braced each other and attempted the dismount. We biffed hard and were laughing so hard that we couldn't get out of the way. Luckily there were two empty chairs following us that we managed to get out of the way before they came. At that time it was 1:40!! Since it took us so long to go down once we were worried we wouldn't make a second...but we said screw it and went for it. I decided to try my best not to fall as much as I could. I only fell 3 times and we made it in 15 minutes!! I was so proud of myself! The board I borrowed was from a friend of Julia's and so the bindings were not adjusted to me so I still am not sure what I prefer. I had the shoving test done on me and I was told I was goofy. That's right foot forward? I have no idea but the board kept wanting me to go left forward and so I kept switching depending on which way I wanted to go...so this may not have been the best way to learn but I have to say: I didn't want to learn any way else and with no other person. Today I can't move anything without feeling pain. My ass hurts form falling on it too much and my legs felt like I had been doing wall-sits for two hours. I have no idea why everything else is sore...probably from tensing the whole time. So that was most of my experience...I left out that I got heckled, called a loser and lost all of my dignity. But there is no other way to learn and Julia didn't care either so I was happy.