Racing in Innerkrems

Daily Schedule

Friday 25.02.2011: Sledging day

09.00 o'clock: Smiley says good bye to the kids. 1, 2, 3 we are dancing and singing and saying "Bye Bye!"

10.00 o'clock: Meeting point in the playing room at the 1. floor. Come with us to feed our animals and then we go sledging and to the Toupingbahn.

12:00 o'clock: Bon Appetit in Smiley's-food-corner

14.00 o'clock: We tinker with Playmais great things. Mummies and daddies are invited

15:00 o'clock: We make up us for the disco.

16:30 o'clock: Disco in the cinema. Take your parents by hand and come into the cinema.

Our driver to Innerkrems tried to explain to us that we might want to stay extra late this evening, as the ski school would be having a race.  At this point the kids looked fear-struck, so we told him, no, the usual time would be fine, the kids wouldn't be racing.  

Despite their fear of competing, the Ella and Alex were both very excited to show off all they learned.  Ella, after a slick run down the hill, came to me and said, in a voice dripping with earnestness and concern, "Mom, I don't want to be a show-off, but it's impossible for me to ski without looking cool!"  Oh Ella, it's so hard to be you.  

I have a similar problem, in fact, as evidenced by my cool-looking black and purple shins.  After we dropped the kids into school (with Alex doing his best to wiggle out of it, and me doing my best to impersonate an Austrian Mutter), Dennis and I took a bus over to some farther-off slopes that Dennis had enjoyed yesterday.  I'm afraid they were every bit as icy as the slopes we played on two days ago, and they were much steeper. But we had fun, despite my wiping out spectacularly.

Dennis grabbed the kids from ski school and we ate an enormous pub lunch of schnitzel before returning the kids.  As our driver had warned us, the kids were indeed racing today, but he hadn't managed to convey that the races would take place during the second half of classes, with only the awards ceremony stretching into the evening. Dennis and I realized this only as we looked down and noticed Alex and Ella ascending the slalom course.

I'm so glad the kids didn't have a chance to back out of the races: they were quite proud of themselves when it was all over.  And they were fascinating to watch.  Alex's class of beginners only started a third of the way up the course, but they each went down, one by one, with a instructor pacing them, after the announcer boomed their name, cheered them on, and, ultimately, called out their times, while proud parents yelled for them and rang cow bells. So it was, indeed, a race.

I managed to get some wobbly movies of the kids' big moments, and I also managed to capture some of their cooler moments as they played on the mountain before class.  Rabid fans of Ella and Alex, I give you...Ski School!

There were many classes of kids to cycle through, so the kids got to play in the snow by themselves for a little (Ella cooly practicing her jumps), but before long, we all decided we had had enough and retired to the hotel next door for beer and hot chocolate and a board game on the iPad we'd so cleverly brought with us.  On our way down, Ella's instructor caught up with us and asked if Ella would be staying for the awards.  I told her I thought not, as we had to get home, and she kindly rushed off to get Ella's certificate.

She brought back a certificate and a list of times and, checking through them, told Ella she'd come in first place. The novelty of that jarred me.  I've been reading Nurture Shock, and I'd just finished a chapter about praising children, in which the author decries the American practice of empty praise for children, where everyone wins, and wins a large trophy to boot.  Well, here's the exact opposite, with 7-year-olds being pitted against one another after only a week of practice, with their rankings announced publicly.

I do think Ella learned something much more important than skiing this week: that it's really okay to be bad at something, spectacularly bad, and if you work hard, it becomes fun and success just might follow.

All three kids felt like swimming at the end of the day, and so they spent one last hour splashing around with their friends.  Almost everyone in the hotel is leaving tomorrow morning, and Ella is exceedingly worried about saying goodbye.