Skiing in Willingen

The last year has gone so quickly that I couldn't quite believe it was time to go on the Year 5 skiing trip to Willingen again.  Last year was really fun, so I was looking forward to going again.  The year group is quite a whingy one, but they weren't too bad, and if they were we just told them to go away!  We arrived on Wednesday lunch time, and were straight away off for our first afternoon of skiing lessons.  We had an instructor called Arno, who was really good.  Most of the teachers had been skiing once (like me) and we had one absolute beginner.  I quickly became top of the class, remembering all of the techniques I learnt a year ago.  It was actually snowing that day, so we always had a fresh layer of snow to ski on, which was wonderful.  The ski lessons were a bit dry, but at least we got our techniques quite well honed.  By the end of the day we were going on the conveyer belt to the middle of the mountain and free skiing down it in zig zags.

That evening we had 6 children with temperatures in the 40s, and one sick teacher.  Most of the evening was spent calling parents for permission to give out paracetamol, and getting up in the night to check on those who weren't very well.  We were staying in a house with two members of the public, which was horrible.  One was really nasty and kept shouting at the children for making too much noise.  They even had to eat their dinner in the same room as the kids.  Admittedly I would have hated it if I wasn't with the group, then again, can you pay peanuts to stay in a youth hostel and not expect it to be full of youths!  The woman ended up becoming a threat which the kids thought was hilarious, ie, 'if you don't go to bed, we will send the nasty old woman down to sort you out!' This was met with replies such as, 'we'll trap her in our very smelly toilet if she shouts at us.' - very amusing.

The food was interesting, and not in a good way.  We made our own packed lunches, which was fine, but our evening meals were spam loaf and mash, and bratwurst and cold pasta salad (not what you want after 7 hours in the cold).  We stay in the same place on the year 6 trip, and I will definitely be ordering vegetarian for that one!  We had a quiz night and a movie night planned, but somehow the coach driver on the way had put the bin with the quizzes and movies and the diaries that the children were meant to be writing, back onto the coach (along with a bin full of sick!).  i'm not quite sure how it happened, but we ended up writing a very quick quiz for the first night, and buying a dvd for the second, so it all worked out in the end.  We never saw the bucket of sick again!

The second day, the children had instructors for the morning, but we were left to free ski.  Two of the lads who were ill got picked up and taken home, and we had one trip to hospital for a boy who had hurt his knee at the top of the mountain.  He's fine and just twisted his knee, but it was a bit worrying.  I sat with him in the cafe for an hour at the end of the day once he was back from the hospital, to keep him company.  I also had a break in the middle of the day to take photos on my nice new camera.  I got some really great ones of the children!

It didn't snow on the second day, so it was a bit more slippery, and not as easy to control coming down from the conveyer belt.  I spent most of my time with Sean, who didn't make it up the conveyer belt last year, because he needed one-on-one lessons!  By the end of the day he was skiing down the hill like a pro, which was great.

On Friday, we left after breakfast, and went to an indoor playhouse in Dortmund.  The kids loved it, and we got a chance to relax and have a proper meal (and by proper, I mean pizza).  I took lots of photos of the kids having fun, and got some brilliant ones of the doing back flips on the trampolines.

We got back to school at 4pm, and I managed to leave by 5.  Everyone had been saying how much they ached on Friday, and I was smug about not aching at all - until Saturday morning, when I woke up with every muscle in my body hurting.  My stomach muscles still hurt!  And I've definitely caught the cold that the kids had. Lots of teachers were off during the week apparently, so I imagine i'll be very busy doing cover next week.

Yesterday, I went out for the day with a couple of friends to a wedding fair at a palace in Dusseldorf.  One of the friends is getting married in the summer, and has only just got engaged, so has lots to do!  It was nice to get some ideas for her to think about.  I'm taking her wedding photos, so I got some ideas too.  We went for lunch, and I had the evening to myself, as Matt was out playing poker with the lads from work.  He got in at 3am, but seems to have had a nice time!