Snow!!!!

I haven't skied since I first tried snowboarding, which I think that this is a similar experience for many. But in Austria skiing is the national sport. Many kids want to snowboard, but they must learn to ski first. Skiing is part of the school curriculum and you can find it on TV every night. Watching my relatives bound out of their chairs as the Austrian ski jumper beat the world record by a centimeter was odd. But I was happy to know that we'd be hitting the slopes a lot this winter.

After the first snow we spent a day on Hinksburg. It's only 15 minutes away, but with it's one T-bar lift, low altitude, and odd chain-smoking locals, I'm glad that we didn't frequent the place during the season. But I proved to my relative that I could ski.

The next trip we drove an hour to the big hill: Ötscher. Full of excitement, Sep, Lisa, Ulrich, and I packed the car the night before so that we could head out early.

[driving...] [There is] [lots of] [snow this year.] [Lisa & Ulrich are very excited about th3e snow!] [Lots] [more] [powder!]

I now had my ski clothes, which were shipped from home, but I used Stephan's boots and skis because he was staying home to help mom decorate the tree. The snow was an awesome powder and the snow base was unusually high. But I had much more pain than I should have had by the end of the day because Stephan's boots were a little too big for me. I thought that I could counter the size by wearing three pairs of socks. Boy was I wrong. I limped for three days due to my badly bruised my shins and calve muscles.

No more skiing for Beau. I'm renting a snowboard and soft boots from now on.

---
Work Update! Just before Christmas the principal at the school where I had been temporarily teaching English for a month, offered me a more serious position for the next three months. In addition to 50 lessons per month, I will be building a small web site for the school. This job is good for my current situation, but I'm out of here at the end of March and headed to Italy for sure. The travel bug's been biting at my conscience.

Uh. It looks cold. It's about 104 degrees F in Chico.

This new feature is pretty cool Beau.

Wanna comment?