Ski Week / Schiwoche

This week was ski week at Nikolas' school, but Nikolas didn't go. We signed him up initially, back in early December, but crossed his name off the list after thinking it through more carefully. There were quite a few reasons why we didn't send him off. For starters the ski equipment we bought, sight unseen, from the previous family was missing some key pieces. The girly white and lavender boots fit well enough and the skis seem to be intact. But missing are ski poles, a helmet, and goggles. Not to mention that he doesn't have real ski pants or a ski jacket. Sure, we could invest in all of those things, but for a three year old in a family that doesn't ski, it didn't seem like the wisest investment.

A second major factor was that not a single teacher from Nikolas' school accompanies the kids. They are loaded onto a bus and driven off to a mountain and have lessons with ski teachers and then come back again. Nikolas is quite attached to his teachers, and it seemed too much to expect him to joyfully jump on a bus without them. Or without any adult he knew. Especially when he would have to sit on that bus for half an hour fully dressed in snow boots, snow pants, jackets, gloves, helmet, and goggles. What happens when these kids need to go to the bathroom?

We first learned about ski week last winter from the family who was here then. We believed that it was a school-sponsored event that everyone participates in, but it turns out it isn't. We started to wonder about it when the list with Nikolas' name on it hovered around twenty kids day after day. Only about a quarter of the kids actually sign up for ski week. At the time of sign-ups, Nikolas' best buddies were in Canada for two months, and we knew he would rather be playing with them in their first full week back in Austria than off by himself on some ski slope, we know not where. Imagine our horror, when we walked in the door on Monday to find the lobby full of pint-sized skiers already dressed in full garb, including Lucas and Thomas. How they signed up without signing up, we still don't know.

We expected tears from Nikolas when he saw his buddies heading off skiing, but he has been amazingly grown-up about it. He waves to them in the morning as he comes in and they go out, and he plays with them for the few minutes that their days overlap after they've come back. He asked once about everyone going skiing, but has gone off to school happily each morning, seemingly content that he is not. We've felt some guilt about it, wondering if we made the right decision, but day after day the newspaper reports on fatal accidents on the ski slopes, and so perhaps it's best that it's not a sport that Nikolas gets into after all.