An odd school trip...

Saas-Grund

I'm back! It's R, and this is my first blog post! Hooray!

So last week was my class's Arbeitswoche (work week). Surprisingly to me (nobody else though) it was only the second week, and it was a very long trip down to Saas-Grund a few hours away, and was kind of like camp.

The first thing to mention was the place we stayed at. The outside was cute, and it was a hotel with the family in charge living on the bottom floor and a beautiful veiw. The inside, though, was horrifying. Keep in mind that I know just the floor with the girls rooms and hallways with badly knit spiders, rugs, and things. The rooms were the worst. Next to me in the first room was a creepy fat panda rug with pink eyes, a photo-shopped sled dog photo with big eyes that stared at you constantly, and a dusty old rug on the wall that the girls sleeping there were afraid would rain dust on them as they slept. My room had ugly yellow tiles behind the sink that clashed with the wood, another knit item, and 3 clown tiles. The third room has a nicely knit rug of Donald Duck's grandfather sitting on the toilet and watching TV. Then the last room was the grand finale, with a racist black clown holding some balloons on the wall. Need I say more?

So the teachers (german/gym and art teachers) didn't seem to care about our safety much. We hiked most days, alot. Wednesday they brought us on possibly the most dangerous hike possible. With two hugely long and high suspension bridges with max 3 people, just two wood planks as a bottom, and  the mere steps of people making them sway back and forth, it scared us alot. Then after that, we went down an entire mountain on some scooter-bikes with fat wheels in groups by ourselves, and with only two teachers nowhere near us, I flipped over the handlebar of mine and fell on my face. The food was scarce too, especially for me and my friend, who are both vegetarians. Every main course in lunch and dinner was some gross meat, breakfast was cereal and bread, and there was nothing for the day except for apples, but only if we were hiking during lunch. We would always be hungry and tired, considering that they kept us up until 9pm in class...

The pictures say it all.

The trip also had a mysterious problem that resulted in the police almost coming, and the teachers in charge getting pretty mad at us. So as far as I know, all of the girls are hanging out, minding there own business, when the teachers call everyone into a meeting. They say that things are messed up, the police almost came, and that everyone had to stay in their own rooms until dinner, and quietly. No one that I talked to knew anything about anything that caused this, but the teachers were steamed. We're pretty sure that that night was the reason that WE had to clean the rooms and hallways on the last day...

Mini rock-climbing course

Contrary to the first three paragraphs, however, the trip was fun. We saw beautiful views in Saas-Fee and Saas-Grund, We had fun on most nights, and we had some nice conversations over meals. Also, we had a wild animal encounter, on a mountain, with a marmot. We put some carrots and peanuts in  front of his hole, and he came up and just stayed, even with 5 girls constantly snapping pictures of him! We did some mini rock climbing course with harnesses and all, and I was one of the few who chose to be hooked up to a pulley and dangled off of a high rock afterwards, and that was exciting and very fun.  After that week, I am VERY tired, and hungry, and I'll have to say that arbeitswoche was the oddest school trip I've ever been on.

Marmot!

After we finished the most dangerous hike.