Some Snippets of Venice

Finally figured out a way to post pics on my blog again. Here's a few for those of you I couldn't invite to view my kodak gallery. Students have begun to arrive for Spring School. I'm hiding in my room and this is awesome. I found out that the wireless works up here. Yeehaw!! Shh...don't tell anyone. It's great 'cause I'll be able to come up here and hang out in the afternoons instead of trying to find a free place in the Eagle's Nest. Sweet!! It's a pretty lax day today. I don't have to start work till 4:00 and then it begins and the next weeks are going to fly. Most of the students are under 20. I'm going to feel like the old one now. :) 50 out of 72 are under 20 and most of them are 18 year olds. Oh well..should be interesting. I get to help lead a family group. 4 Canadians, 3 Americans and 1 German who I've already met. Nice girl named Sarah. I'm looking forward to having some structure again with bible studies and lectures and sunday services. It was a long winter of hearing German and struggling to understand. I'm still learning. I'm working on reading a book in German with a German/English dictionary close at hand. I am also helping the Korean girls with their English. I told them that they probably shouldn't ask me since I'm from a Mennonite community and also have been simplifying my English for the last few months. Oh well..we'll have korean girls speaking with a mennonite accent. haha. They have a really cute accent now. They mix up p's and f's, and r's and l's. It can be very difficult to understand them sometimes. Anyway..I'm going to go and enjoy the sunshine and find Hilde so we can prepare something for our Family Group. ttfn

A Day In Salzburg

I feel like I've been going nonstop for over a week and I have. :) Once we started the cleaning there was no turning back. So I again was reminded that major cleaning includes vacuuming everywhere. I developed a new technique for under the bed vacuuming. Whatever I don't get with the vacuum..my shirt will pick up. :) I was a bit sore for awhile. I only had to work till Wednesday afternoon. Thursday I took it easy and did some reading and sleeping. Yesterday Mark and Hilde and I went to Salzburg. I'm not really into the whole touristy thing, so we just walked around. Mark came with us because he was leaving for Turkey from Salzburg. He hung out with us in the morning and we had McD's for lunch because we couldn't find a Kebap place. (Hilde and I found 7 different ones after Mark left.) We had a great time walking up one of the hills of the town and checking out the watchtowers and the wall. It was good to get out of Schladming and Tauernhof for a day. After lunch we split with Mark. He went to the Airport and we continued to walk around the old city and climbed up to the fortress. We decided against going in and walked back down to the city to do some shopping. Both of us were successful in finding the things we needed. I'm glad that we didn't have more than a day to walk around. We ran out of things to do and hung out in Mirabelle Gardens for a while. Finally we walked to the train station and met Becca at the train to come back to Schladming. She spent last night here and will be flying home to Canada on the 23rd. Today is a lazy day and I'm tired. I haven't been able to sleep past 6:00 for the past week. Here's a recent pic from our picnic on Sunday. This is the Dachstein in Spring. What a gorgeous day!!

Are You All Just Itching....

to hear what's going on in the life of Beth??? Life is always busy here and it's been another full week with 30 kids. It's the last "normal" day of the Winter season. Tomorrow we start the major cleanup before spring school and we also start to say goodbye to people. :( So..this past week..where to start? Saturday. Saturday we spent the morning cleaning as usual and then we had a fantastic meal all together with genuine Dutch food. I can't begin to tell you the names of the food, but it was potatoes and carrots and cabbage and meat cooked in various ways. We also celebrated Rebecca's Birthday early since she's leaving on Sunday. We had a fruit topped Flan and my specialty One Bowl Chocolate Cake. Thanx Mom!! It's been a hit here! Sunday. Easter Sunday was perfect!! I got up for a sunrise service at 4:00 am to be there for 5:00. We carried torches up a hill to a lit cross and had some singing and a devotional. When we got back to T-hof i decided to go running in the rain (yes it was raining) at 6:00. I got back and made myself a pancake breakfast and then watched a lecture video of Major Ian Thomas with Christian. In the afternoon I sunbathed for a while and then got asked spur of the moment to go snowshoeing with Mark. We hiked up a mountain in snowshoes before I had to be back in the kitchen. It was amazing! God gave us a perfect day for it and it was slushy and wet, but we still slid down the mountain on our backsides in shorts. Sorry if that sounds a little jumbled. Monday was a normal work day. I worked the Bistro with Niffy for the last time. :( Tuesday was my day off and I even managed to sleep through the 6:00 body clock. I finally was able to sleep in till 8:00. Yippee!! It was another gorgeous day and I went shopping in town and bought myself some food to make for dinner. Also Tuesday night we went to the Brewery for drinks because Christian was leaving Wednesday morning. Wednesday. Christian left. :( I peeled cucumbers and potatoes outside in the sun. (I have a pretty good tan/sunburn going on right now) Went to bed at 8:15 and woke up at 6:00 to make breaky. Thursday. Normal working day. Went running with Mark up the Talbach and back. Great run!! and fast! Went to bed at 10:00 and woke up at 6:45 for staff meeting. Friday. Normal day. Morning went fast and we had some time off to relax. Had staff meeting and farewell for 5 more staff members. :( And the rest of the plan for the day...go shopping for gifts and work the Bistro for the last time with Tom. Good times. Peace.

Virus Valley

Well, I'm starting to lose track of how many times I've been sick. I had a 24 hour flu bug on Monday and spen Tuesday relaxing to get over it. I'm still pretty wiped out and a few of the other staff are not feeling so hot as well. It's kinda weird. I don't get sick this often at home. Anywhoo..I spent my sick day in bed and got some stuff done on my computer. I sorted out some pics of Venice and today I got more from the other girls. I have 599 pics so far of Venice alone. Crazy!! I'll send out an invite to a bunch of you to be able to view my pics on Kodak Gallery online. Sorry, I still can't post pics on here. lt's annoying, but I wouldn't be able to fit over 500 pics on this page anyway. The album is combined of pics of 3 people so there are some doubles etc. Bear with the crazy ones. :) Anyway..I'm tired and tomorrow's another day. I also need to write a devo for Friday. Pray for me..:)

Well..it's been another week..

Wow!! Another busy week gone by. I'm basically exhausted right now. :) The new guests are already starting to arrive and I feel like I haven't even had a chance to breathe. Oh well only two more weeks. This week we have a whole bunch of kids. I think around 40. Anyway. I should tell you a bit about my past week and weekend. So..as you all know, last weekend I went to Venice. What an amazing time. The hostel was great fun and I have a couple hundred photos of the trip. Venice is beautiful!! We skipped all of the tourist attractions and just spent the whole day wandering around the city and getting lost. We ended up at a tiny cafe for supper where I had the most amazing meal ever. Real italian pasta and cheese. We also managed to eat 4 gelatto each during the course of the day and I even had an Italian Capuccino and Pizza. So good! Olive Garden will be ruined forever. :) The past week was fun with a really good group of people and I went skiing twice. This weekend we had a staff outing in Salzburg at a Japanese Restaurant. It was kinda the same idea as the Golden Fork, but 100 times better. You chose a sauce and filled your plate with whatever food you wanted cooked and you could have as many platefuls as you wanted. I had Shrimp, Bamboo Shoots, Carrots, Turkey, Beef and Kangaroo and Noodles. Yes..I had Kangaroo!! It was really good. Don't worry, the Australians in our group weren't offended. They recommended it. I had all of that with a Japan Sauce over top which was phenomenal and spicy!! I miss spicy food! A lot of people went back for seconds, but I couldn't. They also had a fruit buffet with strawberries and kiwis and tons of other fruit. Also a Salad buffet and a Sushi buffet. I tried a lot. Did I mention that I ate all of this with chopsticks! Incredible! I actually did quite well and managed to get all of my food in my mouth. And I ate a lot! After that we came back and rented the movie Cars. Really fun! Today I spent the morning reading and rewatching part of Cars and then I watched Pirates 2 in the lecture hall on the big screen. Good times! Anyway, it's gorgeous outside and the sun is calling my name. I'll talk to ya later.