The Last Post About Skiing

Hopefully not the last post about anything ever. We woke up this morning to Chris’ work computer singing like crazy as Russia invaded Ukraine. Everyone around us at breakfast was scrambling to see whether leave was cancelled and who needed to go back to work across the continent.

Chris thankfully did not need to head back to NATO yet (“I’ll have plenty on my desk Monday”) so we continued with our plan for one last day of skiing.

This ski trip was fun. The kids became good skiers. I think the reason they like coming here to Garmisch is because we only do American things. We stay at the American lodge with a heated pool and hot tub, they took lessons from American instructors, we ate American breakfast buffets and American tacos for dinner. We do more or less the same thing everyday.

They are really good sports, but I know sometimes they get tired of eating regional specialties and walking around charming towns and going to museums. I can’t imagine why. So on days we put everything into learning new skills, it is so nice to fall back on the rest of it being easy. I wouldn’t want every vacation to be like this (especially ending with news of an invasion), but as we headed to Taco Night at the ski lodge after our best day of skiing yet, I realized that for Isaac and Eloise, a big American taco night is more of a cultural novelty than eating German food.

My favorite Isaac quote of the day, about trying his favorite jump when someone took a tumble right in front of him: “If I wiped out I’d look like a dork, but if I jumped over him I’d look like a pro. So I jumped over him.”

I’m not sure that’s good ski etiquette exactly, but this boy makes me laugh hard a lot. He learned a lot from his ski instructor, who he will not stop talking about, but one thing he did NOT learn this trip was humility. A skill for another trip I guess.