Life at Tauernhof

Well, as you can tell from my title Katie and I have safely made the trek from Vienna to Schladming where Tauernhof is located via 3 beautiful trains making good use of our EuroRail passes. The scenery from the trains was absolutely beautiful especially as we closed in to Schladming through the Alps on a smaller train. Here is just one of many pictures I took during the 5 hour train rides of the landscape. We also randomly went by this castle on one of the many hills we passed by. I was writing in my journal, looked up seeing the castle and immediately grabbed Katie's attention to show her.Once in Schladming Katie and I made our way to the picturesque Tauernhof Bible School which is located just at the base of the Alps around the corner from Schladming's center of town. There are about 40 students here from all over the world. These last few days have been great getting to know everyone and hearing their stories. By now I think I have everyone's name down...I hope. (maybe I can thank Rush for that...). One of the things I really like about the school is that they never tell us we are doing next or what the plans are for the day so you never know what to expect...I know I know, all of you who know me must think that would drive me insane, but it is actually really nice to trust them with all of that and wake up each morning expecting an adventure, and let me tell you, everyday is an adventure especially with the intermitent downpours of rain. It will be beautiflly sunny one moment and the next it is raining harder than I've ever seen. I can honestly say that all of my rain gear has been sufficiently tested and passed with flying colors, including my boots. Each day we have some free time either before or after meals. We have spent much of that time either making use of the sand volleyball court or heading into the center of Schladming for some ice cream and exploring. Sarah and I with our delicious ice cream cones in the town center:


The first day they split us up into our teams of 10 for the 5 weeks. Each of us has a leader, mine is Julie from Minnesota.My team consists of 3 Americans (myself included), 2 Canadians, 3 Germans, 1 from Holland and 1 Romanian (yes, Romanian). We went for a nice hike as a team to be able to get to know one another...though this was during one of the downpours (thus unfortuneately no pictures of the beautiful scenery). (PS Mom-when they say waterfall here, they mean it. There is a huge waterfall just a few meters away from Tauernhof that e walked up next to not only the first night, my room and Katie's room went, but also for this hike.) Once we started making our descent the sun came out and we got a great view of Schladming. The picture does not give the view justice but here it is anyways
Yesterday we learned map and compass skills and at the end of the lecture we were read a scenario in which we were a rescue team sent on a mission to find an injured person and take them to the hospital...all at once all of our leaders handed us maps marked with an injured person location and hospital, a compass and a first aid kit before running out of the room. As a team it was our job to work together and find our injured person, care for them and carry them safely to the hospital. This task was a lot of fun because we were truly able to bond as a team and see how we each worked under pressure-especially it started to downpour right when we got to Julie and were tending to her 'wounds' and making a stretcher out of branches and rope we had. We made it to Julie within 2 hr 30 minutes of hiking and surprisingly didn't get lost once. Here are some pictures from that.


Julie on our stretcher that we took turns carrying: (luckily we had the smallest leader)


Team photo on the way down after dropping Julie off at the hospital. We then were given the task of finding our way home before 6m supper...we made it with 15 minutes to spar...maybe because we stopped for so many photos along the way.
Today we woke up an hour earlier than normal and spent the day doing community service in the local mountains cleaning up the hiking trails. It was hard work and a full day of 5 hours of work, but very very fun. I was paired up with Dan (the Romanian) from my team and him and I were given a snow sledge hammer and a rake and told a trail to follow. We spent the day making canals for water to flow down off of the trail when it rains, steps on steep trails and widened some of the narrower trails that had been affected by the recent rain storms. Needless to say...we are all exhausted and dinner had never tasted so good. We took a bus to near the top of one of the mountains then hiked the rest of the way up to a lodge where we all had some hot chocolate before starting the day. Here is Linda and I (one of my team members) at the lodge with the view: and yes that is snow in the background....



This is of one of the trails Dan and I redid (definitely spent over an hour on this one):


Him and I after a long day's work:


Goofing around waiting for the rest of our team:
Well, I better get going. Each evening after supper we have night lectures given by Toby-It is amazing and I think we all have learned so much already.

Unfortuneately I will not be able to write often as the little free time we do have I will be spending probably with the other students either relaxing and getting ice cream in town or exploring the city with additional hikes....and some of us are planning on jumping in the river soon. I will try to write again in 2-3 weeks. God Bless.

Micah 6:8