I just had such a great long weekend with my soon to be host family. They have an apartment in Zermatt and they took me skiing for a long weekend. It wasn't an official long weekend, we just made it one.
The type of exchange that I am on is a cultural and language exchange. Throughout the year I will have a total of three host families so that I can experience different lifestyles. Over the winter I will be moving in with the Fasels, Urban, Viviane and their two young kiddos Leonie and Nevio. When they learned that I was big into skiing they decided that they wanted to host me. They were so generous and bought me a seasons pass in exchange for me to give the kids some ski lessons. Urban and I woke up early to go and buy my pass and then we made it to be the first on the gondola at 8:30. Zermatt has the highest mountain lift station in Europe at 3,883m. We met up with his cousin Sandra who lives in Zermatt and took off to enjoy the piste. The conditions were incredible the weather was warm and I was in love. What I didn't realize about this ski resort is that half of it is in Zermatt, Switzerland and the other half is in Cervinia, Italy. Sandra let me in on a little secret that the skiing is better on the Swiss side and the food is better on the Italian side. So, we skied all morning on the Swiss side until we got hungry and then we just skied over to the Italian side for a wonderful meal. The food looked so good I almost didn't want to eat it. But I am glad I did because it turned out to be the best gnocchi I have had in my whole life. After lunch we did a few runs on the Italian side and I have to agree with Sandra, the skiing is better on the Swiss side. The last lift that takes you up to get back to Switzerland closed at 3p.m. so we needed to make sure to get there on time. After a long day of skiing, to wind down Sandra, my host mom and I went out to watch some films.
On Friday we had a ski day with the whole family. I spent some time doing some exercises with the kiddos and we had so much fun playing around. While I was teaching them to ski Leonie was teaching me some skiing vocabulary so it was a win win situation! The next two days were also full of skiing. The weather was fantastic all four days we spent on the piste. On our last night Sandra and her husband invited us to their house for dinner and I met their family as well. I had such a fun weekend skiing and getting to know everyone. I am so grateful for all of the amazing opportunities I am having. I can't wait for the rest of the season!! Until next time Zermatt xo