Anyway, for many of the days and hours leading up to the trip, all I could think about was how bad I was going to be. I had snowboarded only twice before arriving here, and to be honest calling it snowboarding would be generous since 90% of the time I was on my butt. When judgement day came though, I was surprisingly pleased with how much knowledge I had retained. I knew how to stop and turn, and i was only on the bunny slope for about 15 minutes. After a few test runs, a fellow snow boarder and I decided to take to the mountain. For the record, up close, the Alps are deceivingly GINORMOUS. Every time I thought the gondola was about to reach the top of the mountain, it just kept rising. By the time I reached the top, I realized that the bunny slope was essentially useless. Me and the other snowboarder took it slow at first, but it didn’t take long before we got into a rhythm and were stopping every other area where the mountain flattened out to rest. We snowboard for about 4 hours straight meeting up with and then separating from different people in our program. Eventually, we separated into different groups and then after about 5 1/2 hours, I decided that my legs  and knees were done for the day. While grabbing a quick bite before getting on the bus, I ran into another girl from my program who was doing the same thing. She was with a group and I went with them to wait for the bus. This led to another adventure….

At some point earlier in the day, the other snowboarder and I jumped on a bus to go to another mountain. It was here that I was waiting for the bus back at the end of the day with the other group of people. We jumped on the bus to get back to what we thought would be the side of the mountain where our hostel was. While riding the bus, we got to the stop (on the opposite side of the original mountain where our hostel would be ) that I had gotten on to go to the mountain I had just come from. After some quick deliberation, most of came to the consensus that we could stay on the bus and it would take us to the other side of the mountain where our hostel was. This would save us considerable time, because then we wouldn’t have to get on the gondola, go up the mountain, then ski/snowboard down. As it turned out, that but did NOT go to the other side of the mountain but rather through the town. At some point, we reached a stop where two other people in my program were lost and tried to as our bus driver how to get back to our hostel (it didn’t work). We chose to get off and see what they were doing, because even if we stayed on the bus to get back to the original stop we deliberated at, it wouldn’t have mattered because the gondolas had shut down for the day. They explained how they were equally as lost and were waiting for some other bus that our driver had just told them to get on. After 5 minutes, the now large group of the 9 of us got on and some how ended up at the train station. We were now totally and utterly lost. While calling one of our program directors who was on the trip with us, a large taxi came rolling up to the station. We attempted to use our broken German to explain the situation and see if he could fit the 9 of us plus our ski equipment. He told us it was an 8 person taxi van, but it should be fine. After all of us packed into the vehicle, right as we were leaving, apparently the two people who the taxi was meant for started arguing with the driver. We unintentionally stole their taxi. After a couple minutes, the taxi driver stopped talking to the two people and we left for our hostel. It ended up being less than a 5 minute drive. 

After the craziness of the day before, I decided to have a more relaxing day. I went with a different group of beginners and stuck with them the whole day. It was a nice change of pace and my legs definitely thanked me for it. Overall, I had a great time on the trip, and it has actually made me want to snowboard again when I get home.

Side note: European skiers are ridiculously incredible and go down the mountain at scary speeds. Also, many many kids under the age of 10 were basically skiing circles around me…it was quite embarrassing.