Gryon, Switzerland

It has been such an incredible, humbling weekend in the Swiss Alps.

Knowing Switzerland to be notorious for their prices, we packed fruit, peanut butter, and a loaf of bread, so a lot of our meals looked liked this, but we certainly aren't complaining because we saved a whole lot of money that way!

The train ride was long, but we kept ourselves entertained by chatting, journalling, napping, and attempting to get a bit of homework done.

Let me start by talking about our hostel.  We stayed at "Chalet Martin," an adorable cabin on edge of one of the mountains.  It was such a homey little place, full of people of all ages from all over the world relaxing after long days of skiing.  The view to the outside world was incredible, and the comfiness inside made you never want to leave.  The kitchen was constantly buzzing with people cooking pasta or chatting happily over bread at the table.

We spent a fair amount of time just relaxing in the hostel, and it was so nice to have a weekend that truly felt like a getaway because we weren't busy sightseeing the whole time.  Making dinner ourselves and playing card games after felt like we were truly taking a break from it all and retreating in a cabin in the middle of a snow-covered wonderland.  Cuddling up on the couch by the fireplace with a wool blanket and delicious chocolate with my dear friend Jaime was absolutely perfect.

Of course the mountain cabin was lovely, but the reason we were there was for the swiss alps skiing experience.  We rented our skis and gear right from the hostel Saturday morning, and then took a train up through the mountains to the slopes.  The view was unbelievable.  It put us in total awe at our Creator.  My camera didn't make the journey, but pictures wouldn't have done it justice anyways.

The skiing part was a semi-disaster, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.  Jaime is the most patient and loving friend ever and I am so insanely thankful for her friendship and that we spent this trip together!  She waited with me, walked with me, encouraged me, and never left me through all my terrible skiing failures, even though she was convinced that it was all mental.  By the end of the day, I finally made it safely the entire way down the side of a swiss alp without stopping poorly or falling once!  It felt like such a huge success.

But before all that, there were some incredibly hilarious, pathetic, embarrassing, wonderful moments worth sharing.  First, on our very first ride up the t-bar ski lift thing, I fell and was being dragged by the lift, so I yelled for Jaime who was ahead of me, and while we were figuring out what I should do, she fell, and so we both rolled out of the ski lift area in the snow into some random track, which we had to take for our first time down.  As we sat in the snow trying to figure out what to do after struggling to escape the t-bar lift we both fell out of, a few little kids laughed at us.  It was quite the perfectly hilarious way to start the day.  Then later on, Jaime wanted to take the regular ski lift because she was snowboarding and the t-bar thing is really hard for snowboarders, so I went with her, but we ended up on this really hard run that was definitely far out of my league.  I think I can sum this run up by saying I hit a little girl (who was totally fine, she was way better than me, it just made me panic a lot and feel like I was endangering the general population by my presence), tears were shed, all confidence lost, but the knowledge that the only way down the hill is... down the hill forced me to push onward however I could.  Jaime encouraged me and stuck with me through it all, which was just amazing and I could not have done it without her.  A random stranger stopped and helped me a bit too, which really just made my day and gave me just the motivation I needed to finish.  Finally after successfully skiing down the last portion of the terrifying run, Jaime got stuck (again because of her snowboard, which you can't really maneuver as well as skis) so in the end I had to drag her by one of my ski polls until we got back to a place that went downhill.  It was just so hilarious how pathetic of a sight we were to see in the midst of all the pros who come to ski in Gryon.

Of course, our lack of ability to compare with anyone else out there simply enhanced our swiss alps experience.  At one point when we desperately needed a break and were in the middle of a cloud so it was literally impossible to see anything so we were not about to start heading down the side of the mountain anyways, we decided to stop at the bar at the top of the ski lift.  We drank delicious hot chocolate and sat in fantastic lawn chairs in the middle of the most gorgeous mountain range in the world, watching people who were all basically pros do cool tricks off of the jump hills that our seats were over looking on the edge of the mountain.  That experience alone would have been worth the entire lift ticket cost; it was incredible to just sit and witness the beauty of the mountains, allowing them to be a simple reminder of God's presence.

Being in a small, swiss ski town exposed us nicely to the culture of the locals.  It was so fun to go to a "jazz" concert (which was really just fun dance music slash maybe light rock) in french at the local bar and watch all the people we saw instructing ski school and running the medical stations up on the mountain that afternoon dancing like crazy, all still wearing their bright red snowpants.  We tried to figure out how to dance like the locals did (mostly I would just describe it as simply "fun and weird"), as we joined in the dance.  We had no fear of making fools of ourselves anymore because we had already done so on the slopes and we couldn't comunicate with the locals anyways because they only knew a bit of broken english at best.  It was a ton of fun.

The last thing I want to talk about is playing in the snow.  Jaime is from California, so she constantly got super excited just by the presence of snow, and it really made me appreciate simply playing in it, as we did on multiple occasions this weekend.  I will end this post with a journal entry about being in the snow of the beautiful swiss alps:

"I never thought I would feel comforted by being in snow (especially considering how I decidedly moved away from cold, harsh winters...) I had sort of forgotten some of the things I love-- from eating icicles to just laying in a pile of snow to catching snowflakes on my tongue to that moment when you step on a huge pile of snow and your foot sinks so deep that you just fall in.  Even walking with a blanket of snow under my feet and snowflakes in my face made me feel at home again-- despite the beautiful mountain range that I constantly had to just stop and admire... which is nothing like my flat suburban home.  But, boy, did that view lead me to praise God!  I also love being in a cloud up on the mountain.  Although it is far too terrifying to ski in, not being about to see anything because of a cloud is like being a a misty, magical, dream of endless white."