1st paragliding lesson

i went for my 1st paragliding lesson on last friday, 31st may. I never thought that it would be that difficult because from my past learning & researching over the internet especially via youtube on kiting lesson, it looks pretty easy. anyway my advice is don't judge the book by its cover! My personal experience was, it was damned difficult. Faridil, a young guy with a-kind-of skinny built-up being my instructor and teacher for my paragliding lesson had given me a prototype glider for me to start off. He referred it as 'kuda liar' and frankly speaking after my first few attempts to take it off from the ground, i had to admit that glider is very very 'liar'! i have been dragged, pushed and turned around on the bare ground when i was trying to fly off the glider. It was truly a painful experience but i slowly picked up lessons.

My 1st day of lesson was undeniably a painful one. Most of my attempts failed and only at the end of the day, i was able to put the wing up for 1 to 2 seconds over my head before it crashed down. To be honest, after my 1st-day-lesson was over, i have big hesitation whether my successful attempts to fly off the wing was truly because i did understand the concept of flying off the wing or it was just a mere luck. I returned home with a little dissatisfaction on myself and with tensed muscle, blotted stomach and a little migrain. Faridil kept on reassuring me that the current whether condition with aggressive wind speed at the learning field was the reason i suffered the pain of learning. 'Kuda liar' has done its job very well to put me into sufferings, i was kinda phobia after that.
 

 Anyway, the 2nd day was sometwhat very progressive. Despite the fact that the wind condition did not come to our advantage, in fact it was poorer that a day before, i was able to fly off the wing with many attempts. I could also experience stabilising the wing over my head and able to apply most of Faridil's instruction. The 2nd day was not a good day for learning to fly off the wing, especially a beginner like me. The wind was consistently blowing at roughly high speed of 15km/h. We arrive at 11am and could not start off my lesson until 4pm. That was the time when we had to wait under the tree shade for almost 5 hours doing nothing useful. Our long so-called time-wasting waiting was paid off, i could able to steer up the glider on top of me with little problems and i did learn something new during the short 2-hour-training session.

Now, i couldn't wait to go on learning other new lessons on paragliding. As of now, my lesson on ground handling was not over, i still need to learn forward takeoff, turning my body from reversed takeoff and some other things. I hope i can have enough confidence to fly off next weekend.