An Explanation for All of My Most Recent Obnoxious Snapchat Stories

Maybe all of my posts should be titled like this.

Anyway, after I returned home from Ski Camp, I had no school for the week because my class was in London. On Thursday, my host family flew to London for the weekend in order to pick up my host sister Chiara, who is home now for the rest of the year. On Thursday I departed to Retz in Upper Austria (about 1 1/2 hour away from Vienna) to stay with Claudia until my host family got back on Tuesday.

Thursday: celebrated St. Patrick's Day in Vienna

this kind Irish woman was walking around the bar soliciting "authentic hats" she brought with her from Ireland, and face painting

Friday: joined Claudia for her German class, and tagged along to her Rotary meeting where we were able to watch Mauricio and Olivia make presentations about their home countries, and Tamara arrived that night to join us for the weekend

Saturday: went to Vienna with Claudia, Tamara, Adam, Mauricio, Georgina, Tom, Malena, and Sam. We went to Naschmarkt which basically a flea market with a lot of food options. We ate really good noodle boxes, got compliments shouted at us from merchants desperate for our business, ate some good gelato, and bought matching bracelets for three Euros that ended up falling apart two days later. I got my hair chopped off, and Claudia and Tamara got themselves some highlights with some box dye we found at Bipa :)

 

before and after of my hair - wasn't a "new hair new me" thing, it was just getting tangled and caught in anything that came within two feet of me, and I didn't want a pool drain to be next

Sunday: Claudia's host mom joined us in the Czech Republic, which is about 10 minutes away from Retz by train. We walked around a town called Znojmo and struggled to order food because we know no Czech. Since we are so poor and were unable to communicate, we ended up just taking pictures of each other like the white teenage girls we are to instill Instagram envy in the hearts of our followers.

Monday: got a tour of Austria's largest historical wine cellar and the town's windmill

Tuesday: Tamara departed at about 11:00, and Claudia and I hung out at Donau Zentrum and Burgerista until I left that afternoon

Laid low on Wednesday, went to a pajama party Thursday night with some school friends, and chilled Friday. Saturday the Easter celebrations began. In Carinthia, Easter is celebrated on Saturday. (Which still doesn't make sense to me - Jesus was dead for three days, so why are we skipping a day of mourning?? Jesus was still dead on Saturday, why would we celebrate that???? It is truly a mystery to me.)
I joined my host family in a town called Vorndernberg in Styria, where we met with my host aunt, her boyfriend, host cousins, and some other family friends. We celebrated in the mountains, in what seemed to me an aristocratic hunting lodge.

Napoleon wrote on this table

Our dinner was a lot different from what I'm used to eating for Easter: wurst (sausage), cold cuts of ham, bacon, and salami, white and schwarzbrot (black bread) and a lot of spreadable cremes for the bread, as well as hard boiled eggs and Reindling, which is a traditional Carinthian Easter cake that is extremely delicious and I ate a lot of it.

Another very different tradition was the Easter fire. It was a bonfire that was burned for most of the night. We drove back to Carinthia that night, and we could see everyone else's Easter fires burning in the fields as well. Cool stuff. 

And right now, the mom of my host brother Aurel, who is living with my family in Montana, is visiting this week. I got to Skype with all of them. (Which was really weird, let me tell you - I've met with and stayed with Aurel's family a few times in Vienna and then seeing Alexandra in my house with my family was rather strange. Cool, but strange.) So that's what I've been up to. The month of April will include a host family change, a weekend trip to Budapest with Rotary, and the beginning of Euro-Tour. 

Happy Easter / Frohe Ostern!!

Ski Week Awards

On the 5th of March, I left with the other Carinthian exchange students to Schladming for a week-long ski camp. Sunday-Wednesday mornings we had ski instructors to show us around the slopes and help us with our abilities. Naturally, I was in the advanced class with some others and we had a great time skiing in the fresh powder and taking pictures on top of the mountains. In the afternoons and on Thursday and Friday, we had free time to ski with our other friends or explore Schladming. Jadon and I discovered a really beautiful walking path to town that we shared with some others. The Schladming Rotary club was awesome to us: we went to a meeting Monday night and they provided us with sleds Wednesday afternoon.

Best Crashes:

1st place: Claudia, for when she looked behind her and got distracted, causing her ski to get caught in the safety net which in turn, sent her sliding downward off a cliff. Tom stopped only to take a picture, while I laughed and J-Max was kind enough to help her. Upon releasing her ski, she continued to slide downward into a tree well, taking J-Max with her. After J-Max used the remaining ski to climb his way up the cliff to me and Tom, Claudia made her way up through the path he forged, and they both lied face-down on the ground for a bit.

2nd place: Sam, when he crashed into a pole going down a tree run under the chair lift. This is not the actual pole, I just thought I should inform you all that it happened.

3rd place: As Tom, Sam, J-Max, and I skied through the trees, I hit a stump and landed in a small hole, helpless as Tom stood idly by and took more Snapchats of the incident. 

Prettiest Waterfall:

This was our view on our walk into Schadming. That is all.

Most Useful Goggles:

J-Max's, which we used to take numerous selfies. Until the lenses got crystallized or whatever and he just took them out while continuing to wear them.

Most Excluding Chairlift Selfie:

You can literally see in the reflection of Tom's goggles an Angry Claudia complaining that she is not in this masterpiece. 

Most Pictures with a Statute of Livestock:

This odd and small pink sheep at the top of the mountain.

Best Translation: 

Nifty turns? I am so ready for them. 

Most Traumatic Sled Ride:

Claudia and I took turns threatening our lives and the safety of others (not including the bratty Austrian children we encountered who harassed us as they zoomed past and hurled insults and snow). I realized my talent of using my mittens as windshield wipers on Claudia's goggles so she could see which cliff we were close to falling off next. We did the math at the end and concluded that our three runs added up to a total of 21 km of hell.

Most Used Flags:

The amount of time that we spent up here taking pictures compared to the amount of time we spent actually skiing is scarily close.

Worst Experience of My Life: 

Me, on a train with two rolling suitcases and skis and poles without a carrying bag along with 5 others with similar luggage struggling to catch our connecting train within the 6 minutes we were provided and then having to get through the aisles all the way to the 2nd class cars, and then having to do it all over again six days later.

Biggest Surprise: 

When we went to a hotel for a Rotary meeting and were led downstairs to a disco with a functioning waterfall and a free soft drink for each of us. Sage, Bridger, Lachlan, and Jakob also gave us a lovely rendition of their choreography showcase.

Funniest Interaction with a Drunk Stranger:

This guy, when he and his other drunk buddies were leaving the bar and stopped to jam with us for a bit.

Person Who Was Closest to Becoming a Corpse: 

Owen, who came down with a sickness and remained quarantined in his room for four days, barely breathing and close to death. He is currently on the road to recovery and the subject of some jokes. 

So that was ski week. My class is currently in London for a week, so I don't have school. And my host family departs for London as well on Thursday, so I will be staying with Claudia in basically the Czech Republic until Monday. And then it's Easter break, so school during the month of March is not a thing I am doing :)