Skiing in Austria!

So I'm back in Austria for the second time this January! It was interesting getting here and feeling that "familiar" feeling. The accent and the road signs, the "font" of the way things are written. The people in this town I noticed are also much more polite than they were two weeks ago.

Okay, so see the lightpole on the lower left? Our condo is the yellow and white-ish building just a little lower & left from the top of the pole.

Friday night I stayed at my host dad's house because we were getting up and leaving around 5 am so it would be easier for me to spend the night there. There are five of us all together - My host dad, his wife, my host brother, and my host fathers friend. We drove all day and got here around 4 or so. After two hours of driving through the mountains I was feeling pretty car sick and very glad to have arrived. The lady that we are renting our condo from was showing us around and when she was finished my host dad says I'm an exchange student aus America and she said "Ah, we speak the same language!" and I'm just like "uhh.... german...?" Haha turns out she and her family are from England, very nice people.

I've rented a board-boots-&helmet for the week and I have already exchanged my boots twice because I swear they keep shrinking! The mountains here are gorgeous aber the snow is mediocre. I'm really hoping for a good meter of powder to fall overnight but looking at the forecast I'm not so sure thats going to happen.

So today I was being all cool doing some snowboardy tricks on the hill and feeling pretty good, until I landed on my hip pretty hard. Then I didn't feel so good. Luckily shortly after that we called it a day and headed back to the condo, but it still hurts pretty bad. Typical Rose though, going like 1km/hr and of course she destroys her hip... Oh well, hopefully it will feel better tomorrow, maybe it just needs a day to recooperate.

Two days down, four more to go! (:

My host dads friend bought this over the internet. I seriously almost peed my pants when I saw it! Snowbird is a ski resort in Utah that my family and I went to a few years ago. At first I saw the logo and was all like "haha thats funny it looks like the snowbird logo..." and then I saw the rest. So weird!

Project Week

This week at Palmnicken was project week. I think its half-year and so the whole week before break everyone did projects. There was origami, maths, dance, photography and cooking. I did a Russian Cooking class. It was very fun, and the food was delicious! There were about 12 of us in the project and every day we would make a different typical Russian food.

Rolling out the dough for the pyrognys(?)

In twenty minutes I leave for Austria again! Another ski trip - I'm pretty pumped (: But that probably means I need to start packing eh?

Ski Trip to Austria

On the 6th I went with Rebekah to see her off at the airport. She was my oldie so her exchange year runs from January to January. In the picture above are me and Jesse and Rebekah at the airport. Jesse (my other oldie) was leaving while I was going to be in Austria so I had to say goodbye to both of them. That day was not very fun to say the least!

Last Saturday we met at about 8 for the 12-hour long overnight bus ride. When we arrived the next morning at Mölltaler I finally got my snow! I was excited, because then I felt like it was actually winter and not an awkward almost-winter stage for 3 months. The sixty-some of us took an underground train up the mountain, and then a gondola the rest of the way. Where we slept was underneath the main chalet that was 3,150 meters high!

These were our rooms, there were 8 of us sleeping in here. From the window you got a great view of the mountain on days when visibility was good.

That first day I was totally mentally ready to go snowboarding until I found out that we couldn't! Apparently when schools travel overnight the kids aren't allowed to go skiing or snowboarding the next day for safety reasons I assume. The next day was extremely windy and they only ran the gondola once for us to go up and down. The only runs we could take were easy runs so it was a little boring. They put us in groups with instructors and I was the only girl in my group!

The second day was so windy that they wouldn't run the gondola at all. We spent it hunkered down playing cards, ping pong, and watching movies.

The very top of the mountain was 3,500 meters high! For a few days we had really good weather and the powder was so fun! In Austria they speak German but with a heavy accent and I was proud of myself that I still understood it.

New Years at the Brandenburger Tor

Happy New Years everyone! To celebrate the New  Year I went to the Brandenburger Tor. There was a main stage set up with the Brandenburg Gate as the backdrop - that was very cool. At the very back was a ferris wheel at the end of a street filled with tents selling food, drinks, and warm hats (:

There were over 2 million people there!

We got there at about 19:00. The stage officially began about a half hour before that. At 7 there were already a TON of people there. An hour before the New Year started they closed the gates to more people. I was expecting to be colder but I guess all the people around kept it warm!

 After a few of us left we couldn't get back to the rest of the group (the crowd was too think to move) we ended up finding some cool Germans and a Brit to celebrate with!

There was garbage everywhere! This photo doesn't even do it justice, it is gonna be one heck of a job to clean it all up!