[: Austria Baby!! :]

SKI TRIP TO AUSTRIA!! WOOHOO!

(and no broken backs)

Ah...and the adventure began on Saturday 10. Phoebe came round to mine and we stayed up all night watching retarded horror films about evil banshees who wait in the shadows and get you when the lights are out. Next thing we knew it was 2am....not a very smart idea on our behalf, so we hit the sack. 3 hours later we were up again, getting the last of our packing sorted and getting ready. Lisa and Phoebe and I spent a good while watching cruddy early morning commercials in sign language waiting for Brendan to come down and take us to the school. At about 5am a car pulled up outside, a bit early for visitors. Next thing I heard struggling at the door and went to go check out what was going on. But not to panic, it was only Grainne and Geraldine after what seemed to be a very good night on the town (they were out celebrating).

So, 6am we were at school, not long after we were on our wonderful coach trip to Dublin. A lovely fun-filled trip. Got to the airport, wandered around for a bit, had a coffee, rung home, ate chocolate, looked at all the Irish touristy stuff for sale...and then we caught our RyanAir plane, of course after an hour or so delay. The plane really freaked me out because they were having troubles with it and it is the most budget plane company up in the air. But we managed to survive so it's all good!

We arrived in Germany, and it was B-E-A-UTIFUL!! Everything was frosted with snow...an absolutely stunning scene. We had a 4 hour coach trip to our hotel (Sonnenburg) in Austria, with one stop for food and stuff. Driving on the opposite side of the road freaked me out. The food was really good, but confusing. Luckily we had...TOM THE TRANSLATOR to help us out! Hahaha.

We didn't arrive until very very late....and to get to the hotel we had a wonderful hike up through snow. Fun fun. The hotel was really nice though. We were the only people staying there. I shared a tiny room with Emma, EmmaJane and Phoebe, and oh the laughs we had. We sorted out all our skiing stuff that night, danced around to ABBA for a bit and then to sleepybyes we went.

The next day wake up call at 7am. Had breakfast. And then out on the slopes for our lessons. I had serious boot problems and was on the verge of tears it was hurting so bad, so I had to go back to the hotel, got my boots changed but went to Garmish, Germany with Mrs Wright for the day. It was a really good day, got to see the town and some German culture. Woooooo!

That night we went to a fantastic ski show. The stuff they did was amazing. Synchronized skiing, jumped through hoops of fire, fantastic tricks. It was incredible, really really impressive.

For the rest of the week we spent all day skiing, went to little Austrian restaurants for lunch (and ate their crazy food. Yummy, but crazy) and then had cool little activities organized for the afternoons and evenings. We went ice-skating, swimming, to the Zugspitze (highest point in Germany), to Garmish, went to a different ski slope and went to a music-cafe to watch a live band.

<- This is the Zugspitze

The whole week we had so many laughs; blasting ABBA songs through the hotel, watching Mr Pollock dancing about after having a few lovely German beers, making Chuck Norris jokes about Tom and so much other retarded stuff.

When we were up on the Zugspitze we were taking photos and we met a lovely fellow from Australia who offered to take photos of us on our cameras. Good fun, had a nice wee convo....but later, when flicking though my camera, I found a little collection of photos he had accidental taken of himself. Hahahahaha.

The final day we spent in Munich, and we managed to get some really good shopping done (finally got myself a big warm winter coat), went to a nice little German restaurant with a French waiter, perved on the German boys, had a little tour by our bus driver and just had a blast. Munich is so old and so beautiful. I'd love love to go back!! But at 5pm we were back on the bus, then at the airport...and after spending a few hours wandering the little shops we had we finally boarded our plane. It was a smooth flight, but had some difficulties when we arrived. One of the boys somehow lost his passport in Munich airport (we didn't need it to board), and they couldn't let him through for ages. Eventually they let him out, and are gonna have a serious search for it. We popped outside towards our bus and seem to have brought the gift of snow back with us! The coach trip back was awfully long and boring. My iPod is now half broken (I HATE TECHNOLOGY!!) and I basically slept the whole time.

Finally (substitute) Home Sweet (substitute) Home.

Took me forever to unpack, but had a blast. Really want to go back. I picked up skiing really quickly and apparently have a natural knack for it. Woohoo! I'm considering taking it up when I get back to NZ. Always a possibility

-Rachel