My brother, I and twelve of his friends spent New Year's Eve at the Mountain Creek Ski Resort. We left from the NYC Port Authority Bus Terminal in the morning and reached the place after about an hour and a half.

After signing up for all our equipment, we decided to go snow-tubing first. Basically, you sit in these donut-shaped tubes and go sliding down a hill covered with snow, picking up speed as you reach the bottom. And since you have no control over it, you end up rotating in almost every direction as you go down! It's crazy, and lots of fun. :D

After everyone had their fair share of snow-tubing fun, we picked up our ski boots and equipment and headed down for training. The instructors taught us all the basics for a couple of hours, after which we were free to practice and do our own thing. It was a totally awesome experience. Most of us fell a couple of times at the beginning, but we all got a hang of it and had a blast after a bit of practice.

The weather up there was perfect for skiing too. I experienced my first snowfall ever (can you believe it hasn't snowed even once in NYC since I got here on Dec 18th?!) and it was absolutely spectacular - it started off as little snowflakes with beautiful geometric shapes, which later clumped together to form big clusters of snow, and ended with a rapid, powdery snow shower.

Later at night, of course, we had a party here at my brother's place with music, countdown and the usual stuff. We have lots of pictures from the trip that I'll post up, probably sometime later this week. :)