When I last posted, I was already trying to go back and cover an entire week's worth of meaningful events during which I'd neglected to post. Now, I have an incomprehensible amount of material to go back through and filter out into what is the most important and entertaining to mention.
Actually, attempting to maintain a blog and to produce meaningful and relevant content has made me realize that sorting through all the mess that I create in my head is complicated. This past week, I've saved two documents in Microsoft Word that are the beginning of posts on Love and Politics, respectively. They both contain the word "today" in the first sentence, but I will have to revise that, because I could not come near the end of even thinking anything on the matter in a single day. So, if it's any comfort, I wasn't ignoring you guys; I was simply having difficulty carving out the time to produce adequately mind-blowing content for you, readers.
Speaking of carving, I've experienced some excellent Swiss snowboarding so far. The Saturday following the first week of class, a majority of my class and some base staff traveled to Verbier, a large, touristy resort mountain past the end of Lake Geneva. Kevin, the ex-military kite-surfer from Florida, had come to Switzerland before the New Year and spent the week preceding the start of class on this very mountain, so I followed his lead up to the highest point we could reach. We strapped our feet into our boards at 3005 meters of elevation and rode down through a submerged boulder field. Luke and Logan rode with us, and a Swiss German student from the Leadership Training School named Nathanael made us a five-man band carving up the back of the mountain. Of that group, I'm probably the worst snowboarder, and I covered about 200 vertical feet in a long, continuous tumble partly caused by my continuing attempts to steady myself. Instead of managing to get back up and resume riding, I set the world record for most consecutive cartwheels. After some difficulties and some ups-and-downs, we finished the whole run and met up with the others for lunch. All our excited chatter convinced our less experienced comrades to come with us on the same run. When we reached the top, Will, Leah, and Matt immediately began protesting. We told them it wasn't as bad as it looked and that they should just follow us, and after we got down the really steep part at the beginning, everything went pretty well for everyone. It was only Matt's 3rd time snowboarding ever, and Luke insisted that "the way to get better is to snowboard with people who are better than you." It seems to have worked. Near the end, though, our group got so big that it was hard to keep together, and I accidentally got separated from the group downslope right when they shut off all the lifts. Consequently, I had to ride all the way down to the village halfway down the mountain and have no way to meet up with my group anywhere. Long story short, we left about 2 hours later than we'd originally planned, and we had to call ahead back to base so that they'd set aside 15 plates of dinner.
The following week, we took a trip to Villars-Gryon. That area is much more frequented by locals rather than tourists, and they seemed to be having ski races that weekend. There was much less traffic there than at Verbier, and the snow conditions were the epitome of perfection, with the previous day's fresh snow supplemented by the snow that fell as we rode. Jordan and Alex, staff from the base, each spent half the day showing us the best tree runs and back ways off of the main slopes and through the thick powder. Kevin compared the experience to surfing, Luke said it was like floating, and I felt like I was gliding over marshmallow spread. The big white blanket was so soft and inviting that I had new snow on me every time I caught up to the group. Villars-Gryon has most definitely taken its place in my Top 3 favorite snowboarding locations ever.
On February 18th, we're going to drive over to Chamonix in France to experience what is reputed to be the best hors-piste in Europe. I'm excited.
Life here in Lausanne is pretty fun and very full. While my class contains 12 students and 4 staff, the building also hosts a 30-student YWAM Leadership Training School, 3 students learning English for Missions, and somewhere around 20 more base staff, plus bedrooms for all those people. The main building is still the same as the defunct hotel purchased by Loren and Darlene Cunningham, the founders of YWAM, in 1968, though its interior went through an overhaul in the mid-'90s. In any case, it is now what I would best characterize as a 4 1/2-story building set on a hill between a golf club and a forest, with the world's premiere hotel school directly across the street. At capacity, it could probably accommodate no more than 100 people. The base also owns a few other buildings in which to hold meetings, store materials, run a preschool, take care of administrative concerns, and host additional guests, while some of the married staff members own condos in the complex right next door.
On week days, we have breakfast at 6:45 and lunch at 12:30, spending a majority of the betweentime in class learning from a guest speaker about the topic of the week. (Thus far, we've covered Hearing God's Voice, Discipleship, The Nature and Character of God, The Holy Spirit, and Relationships.) Three mornings a week, we have 20-minute-long student-led class devotions. Before class on Mondays, we have an hour of worship time with all the students and staff on base, and during the same time on Thursdays, we have Community-wide Intercessory Prayer on a changing list of topics, which has so far included things like the abuse of women and the political instability across parts of the Middle East.
After lunch, we divide up into teams to do "Practical Ministry," which means chores with a good attitude. I'm on the Maintenance Team with Matt and Jon and we take orders from a cool Norwegian guy named Sindre and a British administrative juggernaut named Astra. Most of the other teams execute daily necessities like meal preparation and clean up or vacuuming and cleaning of all public spaces, so I consider myself fortunate to be on the Varied Responsibilities team. We fix things when they need to be fixed, mount things when they need to be mounted, clean filters and any other cleanable non-surface or moving part, make sure the cars are gassed up, move televisions and tables, and change lightbulbs, as well as making sure walkways are clear of hazardous snow and ice. The running joke is using "Swiss" to describe whether or not our enacted solutions are satisfactory (not by our own standards, but by those of the locals).
After Practical Ministry, we engage in a variety of activities. My class spends two hours a week in the language lab using Rosetta Stone Classroom Edition. Everyone else is working on French, but since I was allowed to elect another language, I chose Arabic. Magdy's first language is Arabic, and he told me that we can practice together once I've learned 100 words. To make it more fun, I've been trying to demonstrate my proficiency by piecing together such phrases as "the big egg" or "the dog runs" and to describe words I haven't learned in terms of words I have learned (such as "a yellow apple" to describe an orange). This becomes less amusing as I realize that dialectic differences in pronunciation between Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic ruin my comedic timing, because the window closes as he tries to decipher what I've said. But, hey, I'm learning a new alphabet, so that's cool.
On Wednesday afternoons, we go down to the town square and talk to people, pray for them, and give them free hot chocolate. The first day, we played soccer with an Afghani and some Syrians in a cobblestone rectangle by the fountain, using public benches as goal posts. You know who is terrible at soccer? Me. I'm even worse than the Canadians.
On Thursdays, we have Community Meetings where we welcome in people from the surrounding area and discuss some of the goals and visions that YWAM has and then eat some delicious dessert of some kind. One of the Brazilian staff here made amazing rice pudding a few weeks ago, and we've also enjoyed Swiss traditions like Fasnachtschüechli (which Tabea taught me how to pronounce, but not how to spell). Apparently, I do really well with Swiss German words over 3 syllables, but I can't pronounce "Zucker" properly.
In between classes, we've taken trips down to the main area of town and bought Swiss chocolate and whatever we could find that we considered at all reasonably priced, which is not that much. We've gotten small, expensive pizzas; small, expensive coffees; and small, expensive candy bars. One day, we took a little field trip over to Montreux and hung out by the Freddy Mercury statue on that side of the lake. Also, we have occasional dance parties.
The following week, we took a trip to Villars-Gryon. That area is much more frequented by locals rather than tourists, and they seemed to be having ski races that weekend. There was much less traffic there than at Verbier, and the snow conditions were the epitome of perfection, with the previous day's fresh snow supplemented by the snow that fell as we rode. Jordan and Alex, staff from the base, each spent half the day showing us the best tree runs and back ways off of the main slopes and through the thick powder. Kevin compared the experience to surfing, Luke said it was like floating, and I felt like I was gliding over marshmallow spread. The big white blanket was so soft and inviting that I had new snow on me every time I caught up to the group. Villars-Gryon has most definitely taken its place in my Top 3 favorite snowboarding locations ever.
On February 18th, we're going to drive over to Chamonix in France to experience what is reputed to be the best hors-piste in Europe. I'm excited.
Life here in Lausanne is pretty fun and very full. While my class contains 12 students and 4 staff, the building also hosts a 30-student YWAM Leadership Training School, 3 students learning English for Missions, and somewhere around 20 more base staff, plus bedrooms for all those people. The main building is still the same as the defunct hotel purchased by Loren and Darlene Cunningham, the founders of YWAM, in 1968, though its interior went through an overhaul in the mid-'90s. In any case, it is now what I would best characterize as a 4 1/2-story building set on a hill between a golf club and a forest, with the world's premiere hotel school directly across the street. At capacity, it could probably accommodate no more than 100 people. The base also owns a few other buildings in which to hold meetings, store materials, run a preschool, take care of administrative concerns, and host additional guests, while some of the married staff members own condos in the complex right next door.
On week days, we have breakfast at 6:45 and lunch at 12:30, spending a majority of the betweentime in class learning from a guest speaker about the topic of the week. (Thus far, we've covered Hearing God's Voice, Discipleship, The Nature and Character of God, The Holy Spirit, and Relationships.) Three mornings a week, we have 20-minute-long student-led class devotions. Before class on Mondays, we have an hour of worship time with all the students and staff on base, and during the same time on Thursdays, we have Community-wide Intercessory Prayer on a changing list of topics, which has so far included things like the abuse of women and the political instability across parts of the Middle East.
After lunch, we divide up into teams to do "Practical Ministry," which means chores with a good attitude. I'm on the Maintenance Team with Matt and Jon and we take orders from a cool Norwegian guy named Sindre and a British administrative juggernaut named Astra. Most of the other teams execute daily necessities like meal preparation and clean up or vacuuming and cleaning of all public spaces, so I consider myself fortunate to be on the Varied Responsibilities team. We fix things when they need to be fixed, mount things when they need to be mounted, clean filters and any other cleanable non-surface or moving part, make sure the cars are gassed up, move televisions and tables, and change lightbulbs, as well as making sure walkways are clear of hazardous snow and ice. The running joke is using "Swiss" to describe whether or not our enacted solutions are satisfactory (not by our own standards, but by those of the locals).
After Practical Ministry, we engage in a variety of activities. My class spends two hours a week in the language lab using Rosetta Stone Classroom Edition. Everyone else is working on French, but since I was allowed to elect another language, I chose Arabic. Magdy's first language is Arabic, and he told me that we can practice together once I've learned 100 words. To make it more fun, I've been trying to demonstrate my proficiency by piecing together such phrases as "the big egg" or "the dog runs" and to describe words I haven't learned in terms of words I have learned (such as "a yellow apple" to describe an orange). This becomes less amusing as I realize that dialectic differences in pronunciation between Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic ruin my comedic timing, because the window closes as he tries to decipher what I've said. But, hey, I'm learning a new alphabet, so that's cool.
On Wednesday afternoons, we go down to the town square and talk to people, pray for them, and give them free hot chocolate. The first day, we played soccer with an Afghani and some Syrians in a cobblestone rectangle by the fountain, using public benches as goal posts. You know who is terrible at soccer? Me. I'm even worse than the Canadians.
On Thursdays, we have Community Meetings where we welcome in people from the surrounding area and discuss some of the goals and visions that YWAM has and then eat some delicious dessert of some kind. One of the Brazilian staff here made amazing rice pudding a few weeks ago, and we've also enjoyed Swiss traditions like Fasnachtschüechli (which Tabea taught me how to pronounce, but not how to spell). Apparently, I do really well with Swiss German words over 3 syllables, but I can't pronounce "Zucker" properly.
In between classes, we've taken trips down to the main area of town and bought Swiss chocolate and whatever we could find that we considered at all reasonably priced, which is not that much. We've gotten small, expensive pizzas; small, expensive coffees; and small, expensive candy bars. One day, we took a little field trip over to Montreux and hung out by the Freddy Mercury statue on that side of the lake. Also, we have occasional dance parties.
When I came across the Arabic alphabet last summer, I just knew you would like it. It is all curvy and backward. (Which is not like you.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, the letters change shape depending on whether they're at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word. It's hard to tell which dots go with which squiggles on longer words.
ReplyDelete