Whenever our families gather there are guaranteed stories, nicknames, life lessons and outrageously loud laughter, usually at his own jokes. I love him for it. This is why, he’d be so great in Switzerland, the people would be overwhelmed in a matter of seconds if they saw my family. The Neufeld, and the Willms side.
I tend to get into trouble on public transit.
Sometimes.
Our first time riding the train me and my friend Tom were separated by a rail car, and thus the only way of communicating was body language….so the dance party began. Exchanging increasingly “sketch” dance moves across the train. The people either thought it was hilarious (or at least the older Swiss couple did), or they just ignored us (like the teenage Swiss kids, kind of backwards now that I think about it).
Again, let me emphasize the fact that, the train is completely silent, except for the 2 english speaking kids dancing across the train. Our friends were definitely ashamed. But the couple asked where we were from, and when we said Australia and Canada, they seemed to understand. However, there was little understanding going on today.
My friend Yohan was minding his own business on the bus, a couple seats away from the main group when an older French man walked on and saw that Yohan had his legs up. He then proceeded to lecture Yohan en francais for a good 5 min about who knows what. Yohan didn’t really know how to react. He’s a pretty quiet guy in public, which made this old man harping on him all the more humourous. The older “gentlman” then, just so happened to follow us on to the train and proceeded to lecture us en francais (again) about how we were disrespecting their culture, how we were too loud, how when we apologized in french, it wasn’t said correctly, and then got up and started telling people about how rude we were, by pointing at us and complaining.
Who’s rude now?
He didn’t like the way we dressed, the way we talked, the volume in which we talked, he probably didn’t like how we were showing emotion on our faces, and, on top of all that how we apologized. The phrase “stubborn old man” was derived from this individual. But we kept our cool, and did our best to appease this man, but he would have none of it. It was hard, but we somehow got over it.
This past Sunday, couldn’t have gone better however.
About a year ago, Ben Wall and I made a trip out to Panorama Resort to visit our friend Zack Reimer (from Barrie) and also to get a full week of BC snowboarding. One of the nights that we were there we decided to go check out Zack’s living conditions at his place in town. The mountain was expecting some snow that night so we had planned to get up at the crack of dawn to go and ride some fresh powder. After falling asleep at like 3am, getting up at 6 did not seem worth it. But The entire time Zack would say “Gotta get fresh tracks” (for those that don’t know, that means ride fresh powder). But he’d say it in kind of a loud whisper. So all morning we’d all just repeat to each other “fresh tracks, fresh tracks” in a loud whisper cause we were so excited, but mostly because were just lame.
Needless to say when we got to the mountain they had had about 1cm of snow and our “fresh tracks” weren’t really tracks at all.
This was not the case this past Sunday.
We decided last minute to change our ski day from Saturday to Sunday because the weather looked much better. 2 Days before we went, the mountain got 50 cm of new snow. The morning of, gave us around 50 cm more. We may not have got to the mountain at opening time, but we did arrive early enough to ride, beautiful, fluffy, fresh, relatively untouched powder. All day. I did not do one run without going out of bounds to hit the fresh untouched snow. It was the best snow I’ve ever ridden. Cliffs were being jumped off, people were getting stuck in waist high snow, some in neck high and some were jumping off roofs.
When we first get off the gondola we like to pray before we ride. So we went over to our first run, it was fresh powder, and you could see the beautiful Swiss Alps in the background, the sky was blue and the Sun was up. Right there I thanked God for his amazing creation, the talent he’s given us, for safety, and the opportunity to let us ride some serious pow, and with that we all said “Amen”. Right after my friend Kurt said “how can someone look at this view and deny that a God exists”. Ya, it sometimes seems like a joke that my program goes snowboarding on the weekend, but what better place is there to meet God than on top of a mountain. We do a lot of lectures, Bible study, community living, rule abiding etc. But when were on the mountain were finally free, we finally know what were doing, and doing it in one of the most beautiful places God has created. Thank God for mountains, thank God for snowboarding, and Thank God the world has people who are traditional. Or else every train ride would be a dance party, and I don’t know I have enough (or any at all, really) dance moves for that yet.
Cheers.
P.S. My friend Kurt badly sprained his wrist. 3/3 for injuries while snowboarding. No paramedics or helicopter this time though. We’re improving.
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