apparently I "do not fall gracefully"

After our two+ hour commute to our mountain of choice yesterday, we arrived in Engelberg just in time for shit-show5000. The 10.30 arrival time must be when 90% of Switzerland & Germany showed up to ski yesterday, and the queue was about as miserable as the crowd in St. Moritz last weekend. We must have waited in line for close to any hour, just to get on the freaking gondola. Engelberg's motto is "welcome to heaven," however, this more closely represented our own personal hell; endless crowds, people standing virtually on-top of us, constant European-style pushing and all sorts of foreign languages being spoken all around us.

Unfortunately, the day did not get much better for me. And, in case any of you were worried, my falling style has been officially categorized as ungainly. I definitely have the sore muscles to prove it. Somehow, in the 2 weeks that I was vacationing in Mexico & Chicago (oh, woe is me), Joe became a super-star skier. So, we got to the top of our slope area & I looked down & said, in so many words, this is too high & too steep for me. Of course, there was no other way down but to ski, so Joe convinced me I would be fine & we commenced downwards. Unfortunately for me, much of my downwards progression came in the form of tumbling, skis flying off, head smacking the ground...after the second fall & only about 1/6 of the slope done, I decided to walk down along the side in the ungroomed thick snow, dragging my skis behind me, tears rolling down my cheeks. It was a pathetic sight, if I have ever been a part of one (which of course, as you all know, this was not my first showing of self-pity). Joe was so nice & supportive of my pouting it almost made me want to throw a ski at him ;). The only reassuring part of the whole experience was this was our first time skiing with our brand new helmets, which were, quite frankly, crucial for me on the outing. At one point, Joe tried to instruct me on my stopping technique (I take well to these sorts of things, of course), and I said but wait, you aren't stopping with pizza wedge anymore, you have advanced to the parallel ski stop, and he was like what?, and in typical Duchek fashion, said "so just do that". Oh okay, I'll get right on that...