Keri Goes Abroad: Schiwoche (Ski Week)

My ski group! I'm on the very right, and Johanna is the one with the white hat and purple jacket in the back.

I have skied more this year than I ever have in my entire life combined. I think I liked skiing about as much as I liked bowling when I was younger, and there was a point in my life where I would have rather go to the dentist than go bowling. Skiing is exhausting and difficult, and I was not very good at it - definitely not as good as my brothers and cousins, who were the only people I'd ever been skiing with. I finally started to enjoy it when I got out of the midwest and went skiing in Colorado in High School, where the mountains were real and so was the snow. Still, if someone had told my 18 year old self that I would spend an entire week skiing in the Alps with a class of 12 year old boys and would actually keep up with them, I would have laughed in their face. But that is exactly what I did. I spent seven days skiing difficult runs from 9am until 3pm, and I only fell twice. That's impressive!

The ski week started after a tearful goodbye with Dan. I had packed my massive duffel full of ski pants and spandex the night before we left, and lugged it with me around Munich so that I could go directly to the mountain after dropping Dan off. My duffel is ginormous. It's big and blue and has my name embroidered on it, and it seems to be able to hold an infinite amount of stuff. Imagine me with this massive thing, meeting two hippies from the UK on my train back to Austria who had a grand total of one backpacking backpack between them, and becoming incredibly insecure about the amount of stuff I had with me. My train from Munich to the mountain took me back through Salzburg, and I had an hour between arriving and my train down into the mountains. So I went back home and desperately tried to lighten my load. Imagine my surprise, then, when I got to the mountain and found that some of the kids had brought TWO suitcases as large as mine (though I'm not sure why - they wore the same sweaty clothes every day. I know because I could smell them from a mile away.)

Like I said in the post before, I took a train (Munich - Salzburg) to a train (Salzburg - Zell am See) to a bus (Zell am See - Hinterglemm) to a taxi (Hinterglemm - the top of the mountain) to our mountain hut (called an Alm). We stayed in one of the remotest places on the mountain. No cell phone service, no hope of getting to any civilization after dark, and no way down but to ski or get a 4-wheel-drive taxi to pick you up. When I got there, the whole group had gone out skiing already. I had no idea where I was, was a little sad and a little disoriented, and had no way to contact anyone since my cell phone was out of the network. So I sat with my book and read until everyone got back.

Aside from the craziness of the beginning, the ski week was rather relaxing. We skied intensely every day, had some free time, ate meals with the kids, did an activity with them most nights, and then stayed up late snacking and playing a game called 'Maxl' every night. The weather was gorgeous - warm and sunny every day. It made the snow pretty awful in the afternoons, but by the end of the week I was able to navigate even the most mashed potatoey of snows on the red slopes. Often I was the person at the back of the group, waiting for one of the kids to fall. Then I would ski slowly (well, slowly for the kids but normal speed for me) to the bottom offering kind words and encouragement in broken German. My understanding increased so much over the week! German itself is fine, but fast Salzburg dialect is a whole different level of understanding!

Even with the messy snow, we only had a few minor mishaps. One kid fell and cut his chin on his ski, and ended up with stitches (of which he was incredibly proud). Another broke his wrist, and I believe we had a few broken fingers. But the real problem was this awful stomach flu that swept through our mountain hut like the plague. One poor kid had it so badly that he wasn't sure whether to sit on the toilet or face it, and ended up pooping himself. How mortifying as a young teenage boy! I didn't catch this awful plague until I got back. It knocked me out for two solid days, but Maija was nice and brought me some soup and ginger ale because I was too sick to get to the grocery store around the corner. Aside from that, it was an excellent week!

Skiing, day one

I skied this!

We stuck to blue runs mostly

Some of my kids were awesome, like this one. All of them went off the jumps. I tried and fell on my butt (thank goodness they weren't watching...but the teacher was and laughed at me)