Schwarzwald.

We woke up Sunday morning bright and early for chocolate chip banana pancakes with a fruit yogurt salad to top 'em off. I would like to take a moment to thank my mom very graciously for sending me so many amazing things via air mail.

After breakfast, we all got bundled up and ready to go--packing the car full of sandwiches, bananas, tissues, and skiing supplies. Onward to Schwarzwald we headed--Mira, her friends Anna and Tobi, me and Robert, and Sib. It took about an hour to finally get to our destination, and the whole way we were thinking...hm...there's not really any snow. Once we got to Schwarzwald, BAM! Snow everywhere! Including a snow flurry and lots of snow to ski on. It felt like a completely different world when we got there. The car we parked next to looked like it had been sitting in a snowstorm for many, many days...I was completely amazed at how covered in snow it was!

Robert and I rented some skis, but the rest of the group brought their snowboards. This would be a good point to mention how snowboarders look AND think they're so super cool 100% of the time. In the ski rental hut, it took a while to figure out how to convert my size from American to European. Apparently, Sperrys are the only shoes without this conversion inside of them. Go figure. Once this issue was resolved, we immediately hit the slopes. I remembered from the only time I ever went snow skiing that I do so at an extremely fast pace...and Robert said the same about him! We'd both only ever been once before, many years ago, so we made a good team and caught on pretty quickly. Nonetheless, it was SO ridiculous how many small children were there that were 90 times better than us. In addition, they were so efficient and nimble in their skiing that we just looked upon them in amazement.

There were two main slopes with two separate lifts, and the first one had a bad lift helper man who seemed to be really cold and hate his life. He wasn't very nice, but I told him thank you anyway for helping us properly get on. These lifts weren't seats like you normally have...they were just bars to hold on to as you went up the mountain! We had to give each other a hoch fünf (high five) for making it because it was definitely not that easy. In fact, they had to stop it several times because people would fall off or lose their grip. At the end of the lift when you get off, we usually had issues...so we had to count together, "Eins, zwei, drei!" in order to get off at the same time AND at the right time.

Once we got up, we looked at the other slope, and it was SO ridiculously foggy that you couldn't see a thing, so we opted to go down the first one a couple of times to get used to it. At first, we thought the other sloped seemed scary, but it ended up being the better of the two after we tried it out! We were definitely hesitant initially, though.

After about an hour, we took a break for lunch. When we were done, we had to reacquaint ourselves with the slopes! We decided to try the other slope now, and it was so much cooler. There was a jump in the middle of it that you could get air on if you went fast enough. At one point, we were waiting for the lift, and this guy behind us was listening to me speak English to Robert and asked, "Where you guys from?" I was like, "America..I mean, Florida. You?" Turns out he's from New Jersey and just finished with his BS and is now teaching English to kids in Austria. That actually sounds really cool!

We took another break later with the others and went to the restaurant they have there. This was the first instance of getting hot chocolate. It was definitely good at that point in time, but little did I know there was better hot chocolate right next door...to be discovered at the end of the trip.

For some reason, when we were talking about the snow, I pronounce it "schnow", and Robert pronounce it "snee". In German, it's "Schnee", and in English, it's obviously "snow". This was completely accidental, but we decided that we're going to have our own language by the time the next four months pass, and we're going to call it "Kinderhoodgermish". The kinder part is because I learn silly things from Benji; the hood part is because he learns ridiculous things from rap songs, and the germish is German and English put together. In this language, we also speak a lot with "Nunna", "los", and "schneller!" These mean downhill, go, and faster. What more could you need to say?!

On the second slope, we found a secret crossroad from the middle of it to the end of the first. This turned out to be very cool and helpful in the end! On the last slope run, we took the crossroad to meet the others. I ended up gaining super speed and almost killed two children on the way. Mind you, the crossroad is supposed to be slow-paced...

When we were finished, we returned the skis to the man and went back to the van. We needed a snack, so we decided to eat the aforementioned bananas...only they were almost frozen! It was probably the coldest banana I've ever eaten in my entire life. Bananas are definitely not made for Germany. It was kind of good, though--like eating banana frozen yogurt! We decided to get some more hot drinks before hitting the road back home, so we went to the other little 'bar' type place at the end of the slope. I got a Zartbitter heisse Schokolade...and it was probably one of the best hot chocolates that I've ever had in my entire life. Maybe it was the time and place, or maybe it was just that darn good.

When all was said and done, we piled back into the van and headed home. We dropped off Tobi and Robert at their respective houses. Klaus had dinner almost ready when we arrived, and boy did we eat so much! A day on the slopes will do that to you, I suppose.