141!

hello! day 141..and i actually went skiing today! i think i was even doing okay at it too. my right foot kept calling asleep even when i loosened my boots, but whatever. here are a couple pictures from when we took a break at around 11. i had a radler..the half beer and lemonade thing. mmm..beer and a view, my crazy life.

and here are a couple pictures from lunch. another radler! and a club sandwich.

after lunch i sat in the sun with my host mom and her friends and had a hot chocolate. our seat was heated and the hot chocolate was probably the best in my life. all i talk about is food, sorry. after that i skied down my first red piste...really not that hard but kind of icy. i think i did the pizza about 75% of the time. i'm getting pretty good with my parallel stuff on the blue runs, but red is difficult. i don't want to imagine black! so we came down the mountain and go figure time to drink something again. radler number three, enough for today! then we took the bus and came to the hotel. here's a picture of the town we were in today. its important and really popular i guess. i will figure out the name tomorrow. royalty comes here i guess. nice.

when we got back we showered then had dinner and now here i am. as i type this, i'm laying in bed in my pajamas drinking a glass of wine. haha, wow. livin the life i guess. well time to stop livin the life for today and go to bed. goodnight all!

140!

day 140 and i wimped out and didn't ski today. you guessed it..not enough sleep + chair lift = absolutely not. immediately upon seeing the scary two person chair lift go all the way to the top of the (beautiful but) really high mountain the anxietyset in and i couldn't force myself to push through it. so i took the bus back to around this neighborhood then walked for like a half hour to the hotel. fun times. although it was good to have some time to myself, i really needed to think i guess. so i will share with you some pictures from yesterday, and hopefully tomorrow will be better. i find myself yet again feeling lucky because tomorrow is always a new day!

beautiful mountains..you can only imagine my fear going up there on the lift!

speaking of lifts, heres a lift i actually liked because ITS ENCLOSED! well it was nice until it stopped and let us swing there for five minutes..

awesome host family number one!

nail game..no of course thats not my hand with a beer..hehehe. but seriously, half beer half lemonade.

sliding down a hill after "apres-skiing" haha...love you all and thanks for reading.

139.

my dearest blog readers, hello. skiing today was very nice, and i think i actually enjoyed it. this morning i went with a ski teacher and a couple other people and i found it not so scary and not so intimidating after all. go figure there! but i must say that the chair lift at the very top of the mountain was the scariest thing of my life! having your feet dangle down while heading up to the top of the giant mountain is quite intimidating. although, i do believe it was also one of the most beautiful (if not THE most beautiful) sights of my life. but the lift was after lunch, before lunch we just did easy stuff which was fine with me. so let me tell you about lunch. we all met at this crazy lodge type place at the bottom of the mountain for lunch and at the end of the day. i had something that i would describe as...a giant hash brown with cheese, bacon, and a fried egg on top. weird eh? but so good. so after lunch we first took a normal (enclosed!) lift up the mountain which ended up stopping leaving us suspended for like five minutes swinging around...didn't enjoy that at all! so after skiing more than enough we met at the crazy bar place again. since we were standing outside my host mom suggested that i drink another warm wine like yesterday but i really didn't feel like it, so the guy behind the bar suggested another warm thing...which was basically like apple cider with some alcohol in it. okay can't complain, haha. eventually we went inside and i finally figured out the definition of "apres ski". basically, its the party after a day of skiing. for me, it was drinking a couple "radlers" (half beer half lemonade..really ridiculous actually), pretending to dance to loud german music, and playing a drinking game. the game was this giant tree stump where you hammer nails into person by person until your nail is all the way in..and the last person to get theirs in buys everyone drinks or something. so after some partying we came to the hotel and had dinner. i came to my room to blog after dinner and sad news awaited me on the computer. a perfectly young, creative and loving friend tragically died in a hiking accident. it's really sad, and i feel beyond horrible for the family. but with faith you can get through anything, and the family is the most faithful and inspirational family i know. my trips to utah won't be the same without his witty comments. so rest in peace josh, you are an inspiration to everyone. becca and i would have never dared to dance in front of the middle school for the student council elections without you leading the way and doing crazy things the year before. thanks for reading guys!

138!

day 138, first day on the slopes, and the blog has also reached over 9 thousand total page views. yippity doodah. well, today started nice and ended nice, i will say that for sure. for once i didn't mind eating bread for breakfast because they were some classic Austrian rolls that i've expected to see in Europe since the day i got here..along with some hot chocolate made with really real milk...or, 2%? who knows. then it was time to ski. i wasn't that scared actually, but let me start by giving you some background information about myself. if i do not get enough sleep or if i have had a bad nights sleep, i am a wreck. i'm usually not an angry, emotional, or bitter person..but with the improper sleep, anything can happen with me. last night we slept with the window open because my host mom is used tothat. okay, i'll try anything once. hmm, not so pleasant. thus, i was fine going up the lift, which i thought would be the hardest part..but i had no idea what was to come. we got out of the lift and all the sudden i look down and see the steepest slope i could have ever imagined i would start with. okay, have no fear..i can do this since i've practiced on the moving carpet, right? absolutely not! fight or flight...hmm, lets see..little sleep, steep hill..FIGHT! i got down the hill and never wanted to do it again in my life. but lucky me i have five more days of it, hoorah hoorah..lets get to it. no, actually it wasn't as bad as imake it sound. apparently i was actually not so bad at it either, but i can't say that it was at all enjoyable. thats how i am though, if i am uncomfortable with something or feel like i'm not doing it perfectly; i will "dislike" it. that is something i am really really striving to i

mprove in my time as an exchange student. i've come a long way so far, and this skiing nonsense is going to make me hard as a rock, or...my legs at least. here's me pretending to be happy doing "the pie/pizza/plow" down a hill. i was a lot less giddy than i appear to be.

next is the map. the finger is pointing to what we did. it took me like two hours, an hour of which was complaining. my fear of heights really doesn't help me with the steep winding slopes of Austria..shucks!

and this is the warm wine i drank after my failed attempt at skiing. it tasted like warm wine with apple cider spices. i could only finish half because i wasn't feeling 100%, but i'm glad i got to try it.

so we finally came to the hotel after what seemed like forever. everything seems like forever when your head isn't in the right place. we had chicken for dinner. last night was schnitzel, best thing ever! but like i said, morning and night of today were fine. skiing is just another thing i need to push myself through and learn some valuable life lesson crap from, i know that. please believe me when i say that i will try my hardest again tomorrow, but it really is the fear that gets me. a switch in my brain must flip and say, "so what if i fall over that giant cliff..i'm here to ski!"..and that switch will probably not be flipping for a couple days. so thanks for reading, and here are a couple stupid quotes i found about skiing.

The sport of skiing consists of wearing three thousand dollars' worth of clothes and equipment and driving two hundred miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and get drunk. ~P.J. O'Rourke,Modern Manners, 1984

There are really only three things to learn in skiing: how to put on your skis, how to slide downhill, and how to walk along the hospital corridor. ~Lord Mancroft, A Chinaman in the Bath, 1974

haha, i think they are kind of funny. last but not least, a picture of the blanket in the hotel room. a heart! aww. goodnight!

137!

good day bloggers! i have now officially written my blog from three different countries. usa, belgium, and today austria! we finally left around 6:30 this morning and i took two dramamine and was out cold sleeping most of the way here. the drive was only about 7 hours because nobody was on the roads...partied too hard to wake up and drive in the morning maybe? so we arrived at our quaint hotel and then went to rent our ski equipment. apparently i got lucky and have some brand new boots and nice skis..nice! so tomorrow will hopefully not be so bad..wish me luck with the falling, or better yet wish me luck not to fall! but seriously its really beautiful here. when we were driving in i thought to myself that its like..utah and the black hills combined, only better. i also bought a new hat today, its pretty cool. i'm sure you'll see it in pictures later. i don't know why i'm so proud of my hat, but i like it. anyways, i'm very happy the hotel has wifi, although it won't connect in my room so i have to sit in the lobby. now i better go get ready for dinner. i'm very lucky to be here! i genuinely feel special. hmmm. hope your first day of 2011 is fabulous! thanks for reading :)