So, some of you may be giving up on my blog here because you are either thinking that I gave up on it or that I forgot about it. Well, neither of those things are true. The fact is I have been really busy over the past couple of weeks. Anyway, I have been told that y'all back in Colorado want me to write a tad about how skiing in the Alps compared with skiing in the Rockies, so I will go ahead and include that in this post. So, I'll go ahead and start with skiing:
After skiing in both the Alps and the Rockies, I am not able to say which was better or which I liked better. Skiing is great in my opinion, whether you do it in the Alps or the Rockies, so for me one is not better than the other. Anyway, while there were a few easily-noticed differences, overall it was more or less the same.
The first difference is one that you hear from everyone who skies regularly and has skied in both ranges is the snow. And this is really the first difference you notice when getting off the lift for your first run. The snow just feels different. I can't really explain it, but it just feels different. I tried explaining it to my family here, and I tried explaining it to my family in Colorado, but I find that most feelings cannot be adequately expressed in words, and I am definitely not capable of explaining this with words. So, if you want to know what I am talking about when I say it feels different, you'll have to see for yourself.
The second big difference is the lifts. First of all, many of the lifts (probably between 1/3 and 1/2) are surface lifts, whereas almost all of the lifts at resorts in the Rockies are aerial lifts. The other difference I noticed was that the resort is big enough and spread out enough that there were never really any lift lines, which I liked a lot. The thing is though, that, whereas we Americans are used to lines and generally are polite and patient waiting our turns, the Europeans are sort of assholes. They all (especially my host dad) seem to believe that waiting is for other people. Their attitude is cut as many people as you can, as fast as you can, until you get onto the lift. This really bugged me. Now, I can be an asshole to my friends, and that doesn't bug me a lot, because that is a part of a lot of friendships. I can also be an asshole to people serving me in restaurants of coffee shops if they are incompetent and if I am already ticked, and I don't beat myself up for doing that. But, being an asshole to complete strangers that are stuck in the same situation as you, I mean I can't even think of a word to describe how I feel about doing that. I mean, you have to be pretty low to do that. Now, don't interpret this as me calling my host dad the scum of the earth, because, in fact, I really like him, and all of the family here, but there are just some things that tick me off, such as this. So I would end up between 10 and 20 people back in the line. Anyway, back to what I should be writing about.
The third, and probably last, difference that you really notice is your surroundings. Whereas it is almost all trees until the uppermost slopes in the Rockies, it is almost no trees until the bottommost slopes in the Alps. I have to say, it the lack of clearly defined runs caused by this through me off pretty much the whole week I was there, and it was probably the thing that I had the hardest time getting used to. The other thing that you might be expecting to see in this paragraph is the difference in the surrounding mountains. But there wasn't really any definable difference. In both ranges, the views from the top of the slopes are incredible and beautiful and all of those other similar, wonderful adjectives often used to describe views of nature.
I lied (I thought of this while writing the above paragraph), there was one other easily noticed difference, and that was the eating places. While the eating places are placed similarly and appear more or less the same in both places, the way they are set up is a tad different. The on-slope restaurants in the Alps feel a bit fancier and more formal than the ones in the Rockies. In reality, when I now think about it, they really aren't that different. In both places they are cafeteria style, where you go in, pick up a tray, pick up the food you want, pay, and go to a table to eat. The thing though is that it feels much more formal in the restaurants in Europe. They are smaller restaurants, usually aren't as crowded, and are furnished a bit nicer, and so you get a formal feel when you enter.
And now it is March, and I still haven't finished this post, and so, I am still sorry I have been taking so long. But at least it is for a good reason - I have been busy. Busy with school, busy with basketball, and busy planning a trip with some of my friends for right before I return home. And so, I haven't had a lot of time to write. Anyway, to continue...
The other day, I went to a festival in a small town a bit outside Madrid to watch a bullfight. . .
Well, I just finished going through the pictures from the bullfight, and I have decided that I am going to tell you all what happened by using the pictures, but because of the number of pictures, I am going to do that in a later post.
So, on to the AFS orientation:
We had our second obligatory AFS orientation in Toledo. Overall, it was a lot better than the first, but still was quite lacking. Anyway, everyone from the AFS Madrid group met in a bus station in Madrid at 9 AM Saturday morning. We then took a bus to Toledo, where we arrived around 10:30 or 10:45. We then walked from the bus station to the train station, where we met a pair of students that had come in from Valladolid to do the orientation with us. We then walked about a kilometer uphill to the hostel we were staying in. The hostel was inside an old, castle-like building, and was actually quite nice. The room I was in was quite spacious and had a beautiful view of Toledo across the river. Anyway, the activities we did were similar to the ones we did at the first orientation, not super fun, but not incredibly boring and sucky either. The thing that made this one a tad better though was that we didn't stay in the hostel the whole time. Although it was only for a couple of hours and was part of a scavenger hunt, we did at one point get the opportunity to go into Toledo to walk around. Toledo was quite nice and pretty. If I had the opportunity to pick where I was going to go to visit in Spain, I probably wouldn't go there again, but for a place to spend a few hours walking around in, it was quite nice. Anyway, other than that, and getting to see some of the other students again, there isn't anything all that exciting to tell about it.
Well, I am going to finally publish this post now. It has been awhile since I published, and again I am sorry for that. Also I am sorry if there are any major spelling errors or any parts of the above post that just didn't make a lot of since - I am feeling too lazy to proof-read it, so it is quite possible that there are errors above. If not, well then I am pretty amazing at writing. So, anyway, till next time.
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