christmas in austria

let me start off by saying merry christmas to everyone at home! although it doesn't feel much like the holiday here, i pray immense blessing and joy on his wonderful day. we have been given the gift of gifts, so let us rejoice the day that love was born! i celebrated christmas on my own by lighting a candle my aunt marcia prepped me with (the fifth of advent), and by opening a small gift given to me from her. thanks sha sha! :)

just a lot of prep work happened today. i'll report the highlight:

brett came in my room this morning around 8:30AM. it had snowed all night leaving a good two feet of fresh powder to play in. 

"c'mon! get up! let's go!"

i rolled out of bed and pulled my skii clothes on, grabbed a banana and walked outside to the rental shop (which was about 100yards away). did you know that to skii all day and rent equipment, it only costs $40USD?! riiiiiidiculous! for those of you who don't skii too much, think $40 (at least) for equipment at home, and around $60-80 for the lift ticket... there's no petty and tedious paperwork. the rental guy was super chill and hung over from the night before--later when i saw him and asked if i could return the rentals he just said, "oh ja, later" with his breath smelling of beer. that's the life. 

it was still snowing when we headed up and it literally snowed all day long. even as i write this at 10:30pm, i still see small flakes falling down. there were a few lifts that lead to big trails and one main gondola that fits about 50 people in it. it looks like the trolly at shadowbrook lounge in capitola only A LOT bigger. the gondola rides up on tracks for about...10 minutes and we find ourselves at the top of the mountain. today (because it was snowing and because we were so high) it was a COMPLETE WHITE OUT and it was probably the scariest thing. however, i all of us are like young puppy dogs, so ignorant and clumsy, that we jumped right in full force into the white-out conditions and the fresh 2 feet of powder. PLUS there are no trees at all to mark the trail, which made things even more difficult. there were a few yellow and black flags posted every few hundred yards, but that was it. all was welll! no falls, no breaks, nothing. amen!

there are NO CROWDS AT ALL! i think the most people i've seen are in the gondola. that's because everyone here is practically professional and they take off to the hardcore stuff. the runs that we were on, there were about 5-6 people max sharing the same slope. these trails are about 6 km long each (so that's about 4 miles)... talk about exhausted. i did about 3 runs up and down that big gondola (which took a good 2.5 hours) and was done for the day. the boys kept going for another hour until they all stumbled in from the cold looking WORN OUT. it was such a blast; we'll go a few more times once kids come.

program team met together for some practice time. we went over music for the next two days and the guys started sorting out their lines for the walk on characters. this all totaled about 3.5 hours and we were tired. but we feel great! and well prepared! i can't believe kids are coming tomorrow! whew. i will try and load some pics of practice and actual leading soon. videos take FOREVER to load because of the poor internet connection so we will see if i can post those too.

i'm hoping to get the guys to write a small excerpt here. stay tuned!

much love.

peace