No falls!

Hi friends!
I hope everyone had a nice weekend. It is Sunday night in Luxembourg, and I am at that Portugese internet cafe. A strange sidenote- my roommate and I discovered that it is part internet cafe or bar/part bowling alley. There is a random side room with one lane of bowling. Weird I know, sometimes Europeans can be tres bizarre...

Anyway, I wanted to give you an update on skiing yesterday! It was a lot of fun! I woke up yesterday morning at 4:15 am, bundled up in a ton of layers to compensate for the fact that I had no snowpants or ski gear, and headed to the train station. Unfortunately, the group of us who live in Bettembourg had thought a train would be coming at 5:20 to take us to the city where the bus would pick us up, but we read the schedule wrong. At 5:35 we realized the schedule we had read did not include Saturdays! After a minor freak out, we called some people and the bus was able to pick us up directly from our town. Phew, crisis averted.

After a three hour train ride through some beautiful Lux and French countryside (that I mostly missed since I was sleeping) we arrived at Lac Blanc ski mountain. Lac Blac is located in the Alsace region of France, not in the Alps sadly. The teacher who organized the trip warned us that it was not as huge, and super resorty like the Swiss Alps where Louis Vuitton stores can be found in the lodge, but that it was a decent mountain where people took skiing seriously. I think his description was pretty accurate. The best place I have skied is in Vermont, and that was when I was pretty young, but I would say Lac Blanc was comparable to that. When we first got there and were standing at the bottom of the mountain, we saw people skiing down the huge, very steep hill in front of us. They all looked intense, especially the ones who were wearing very tight spandex suits, and I think we were all intimidated.

Although I learned to ski when I was little (thanks for the ski school Mom and Dad) and went very frequently in middle school, I had not been in several years. I think the last time was sophomore or junior year of high school. I was pretty nervous that I would be really rusty. But after getting our rentals at the lodge, and heading up to the mountain, I was eager to start. It was strange, there was one lift to the middle, sort of base portion of the mountain. Then from there, you could take these individual t-bar lifts up to the top or if you skied to various locations on the side, to other top points. The t-bars went between your legs, and jerked you pretty hard. After watching several Europeans go up, my friend Kelly and I decided to brave the odd contraption and get started. She went first, the French man helped her sort of sit on the thing, it jerked, and...she completely whiped out and landed on the ground in about 2 seconds. I tried to explain in French that we were American and had never done this before, and the men sort of laughed at us. Kelly came back, tried again, and....fell again! At this point, the men were getting a little frustrated. I decided to try. I held tight, and tried to stand tall (which is what I think the men were saying in French) and went! I didn't fall, and made it to the top! Kelly made it on her next turn- 3rd times the charm.

The very top was were they had the bunny hills, and since Kelly and I both aren't experts, we started there. Several people in our trip had never skied before, and they were up there trying to learn with the help of some of the more advanced people. I was surprised how easy skiing came back to me!! It really was like riding a bike. I did not have much trouble at all- no falls! I tried to work on my technique, and refrain from doing pizza all the way, and instead ski parallel. Most of the time, I was able to do this, sometimes on icier steep parts I had to revert to pizza. I kept thinking of the advice my Dad used to give me to use the whole mountain and how to turn. Skiing brought back a ton of great memories of times with my family and the Grabers and Higdons. I saw a few bright neon jackets, and was reminded of mom's sweet pink and purple one!

Kelly and I skied together for the whole day. When we were ready to move on from the greens, I asked a man in French what the difference was between the colors- they don't use shapes like in the US, but the colors were pretty much the same. Green was very easy, blue easy, red somewhat hard, and black very hard. There were 2 blues open, and we did them a bunch of times. We also went on several reds, which were pretty challenging, and probably like some of the hardest ones I had skied in the states. I got more confident as the day went on and I think I handled the reds pretty well. The conditions were decent, although there was some ice, but it wasn't too bad. One annoying thing was that the French seemed to have no concept of lines. Getting on the main ski lift, everyone just sort of bunches up, and then people just randomly step in front of each other. Not at all like the orderly way at home! Another cultural difference I suppose! We broke for a quick lunch and a few photoshoots, but otherwise skied all day from about 10-430. It was really fun, and made me miss skiing so much! I am vowing to go at least once next year when I am back home!

We all met in the lodge at 5, and since they weren't serving dinner until 7 (those french eat so late) we convinced our very nice bus driver to look for some place to stop on the way home. We were all exhausted and very hungry, and were thrilled when he pulled off at a McDonalds after we had been driving for about an hour. I hardly ever eat McDonalds at home, but man it tasted so familiar and great, just like at home! We got home around 9:30 and while some people headed to the bar, I headed for bed. I watched a movie on my laptop, and just clonked out, it was a tiring day!

Today, I slept in and had a leisurely sort of afternoon. I did a little reading for class, and went for a run around my town. I met my friend Kelly in the city around 430. We planned on shopping a little, but forgot almost all stores in Lux are closed on Sundays. We got a cup of coffee at a bar and then went to a nice restaurant right in the city center. We got there a little before six, and although they seated us, they didn't take our order for awhile. I think they were shocked we were wanting to eat at such an early hour. We were the only diners in there for a bit, and it was pretty awkward. We eventually ordered though, and the food was great. We got a price fixed menu that came with quiche, coq au vin (chicken in wine-very french), and dessert. It was all delicious. We also each tried a glass of vin chaud- hot red wine that we had heard about. It was freezing and snowing outside, so it was a nice warm up.

Ok this is all I got for now! Look for a post later this week about my highs/lows of life in Lux so far! Love you all, and to everyone going through rush, hope it is going well! I can almost hear the T-R-I chant when I think of you all!

Care