Ski Trip to Austria

Last week was Crocus Week in the Netherlands. It's the week the crocus start to emerge from the ground and there is a week off for schools. (One part of the Netherlands had last week off and the other part has this week off to not totally overwhelm the airports/trains/etc.)

Alex went on a ski trip with his school to Obertauern, Austria. Apparently this is a part of Austria where several mountain ranges meet, so it means they always have lots of snow. 65 kids went on the trip with 10 teachers.

This is him in the gym just before getting on the bus.

The bus ride was approximately 12 hours. They left around 10pm and got into Austria around 11am. Then they went to the ski rental shop and then walked up the mountain to have lunch.

This is Alex with his friend at the ski rental shop.

And this is the group at the restaurant for lunch.

You can tell they all look a bit tired.

They stayed at a youth hostel with three other schools. Apparently the school from the UK had a 21 hour bus ride, so the kids from Holland didn't feel so bad about their 12 hour ride after they heard about that.

Every day they had four hours of lessons - two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Alex has only skied twice before, so he started in the beginner's group. After six days of lessons, though, he said he was skiing mostly "red" slopes (apparently these are slopes that are between blue and black).

Alex is on the left.

In the evenings they always had activities - a ping pong tournament, a quiz, a silent disco, swimming, etc. Alex shared a room with three other 7th graders and one 6th grader. He said they stayed up talking until 11:30 most nights.

Alex and Mike have tried to run a 5k in every country we've visited since arriving in Europe in June (22 so far!). Two of the chaperones for this trip were also Alex's cross country coaches, so they agreed to run a 5k with him one morning. One of his roommates (who is not a runner) also agreed. Alex said it was pretty clear how much the altitude impacted his running.

You can tell Alex's friend is a little less excited about the run than Alex

After six days of skiing, they took the bus home. They left around 8pm and arrived back at school around 9am.

For Mike and I this was the first time we've shipped our son off to another country without us. That was a little strange. Since we had a week without him, we decided to go on our own trip. (More on that in a future post.) It was a little weird to have everyone so far apart!

Given my phone's picture of Alex is with a box of Olive Garden breadsticks, you'll be able to guess one of our first stops when we get back to the US!

Since returning, Alex has been in a really good mood. We think he had a great time on the trip and it was a big step for him to go on his own. The first night he texted with us for about 30 minutes. After that it was a bit hard to get him to respond to texts and we ended up scouring the pictures sent by the chaperones for proof that he was still with the group. But, we figured him ignoring us was a great sign that he was having a good time.

When we asked him what he had to do differently compared to traveling with us he said "I had to keep track of my own stuff and try to stay organized." He said he also had to convince people to do their share of cleaning of the dinner dishes. All good lessons.

He was also very proud that the 7th grade boys got second place for the cleanest room. No small feat for a bunch of 12 and 13 year old boys! But the prize was second pick on seats on the bus on the way back, so they were very motivated.

He slept most of the rest of the weekend, but now really loves skiing and had an amazing trip.