15 Bruises and 4 Scratches Later..

This past week has been completely glorious. Complete with incredible highs and slight lows, the lows are mainly from exhaustion from the incredible highs... :D The students have been here for almost two weeks and they are awesome. There is just so much life at Taurenhof and people live it up!
We have had many adventures so far... for instance a couple of nights ago we played Fugitive around the town of Schladming. For those of you who don’t know what this is it is pretty much Mission Impossible type game where you have like a base that you are trying to get to, then you walk away from the base (the fugitives) while the sheriff type people try to find you and stop you from getting back. It is played in the dark and the sheriffs stop you by shining their flash lights on you and shouting your name. It is brilliant and guess who was one of only two people to get back to the base!?  Yours truly of course. :D But I have to admit I was in a group who had like the most ninja person and we all made it back to the base, which was the lecture hall... but there was a part where you had to sprint so I am last, then Kendra, Kenton and Daniel. Daniel makes it but Kristi (my beloved room mate/instructor) caught Kendra and Kenton. So I freak out and hide behind a tree. Then Kenton brilliantly starts talking to Kristi to distract her and they walk down the path and I ninja around the tree and Daniel is like waving ‘come come!!’ and I bolt and I make it! And Kristi didn’t even realise until Daniel and I were celebrating with high fives and shouts :D
There has also been quite a lot of slack lining going on. I still can only get about half way until I fall off. But they have been putting it over the river lately I haven’t tried it there yet but I sure am going to try! Oh I also showed a couple of them the ‘flexibility test’, you drama students will know what I am talking about. The ninja-as one with like a broom stick. So that was incredibly entertaining. The other day I was ‘on breakfast’ so I had to stay in the kitchen rather than going and sitting down and eating with them, so they all have to make a pack lunch for their day trip and as each one comes to the counter I made conversation with them as you do. I think it was my Muffin Break training coming out a little.. but Kathrin was in the kitchen too and just started laughing at me and saying “ you are so funny” It was great. :D
Oh and this part is for you mom, there is this photo week here where they go on all these hikes and then take photos and every time I see them I am just thinking, Mom would LOVE this! We went to a slide show tonight of a local famous photographer and his photos were just stunning. It is so beautiful here and there are so many places to go!
Okay so now to the AMAZING PART that you have all been waiting for. So on Monday I am cleaning away as I do and lunch comes around and it goes around and we are cleaning up lunch and Julia (the house keeper) comes to Kerstin and I and says, “You guys can go up to the hut where the UB students are and stay there for the night and go rock climbing with them tomorrow.” Kerstin and I are just like, WHAT. No way!!! You are kidding me. That is so amazing!! She went and asked Hans-Peter (the director of Tauernhof) and organised it all for us! It was so amazing. So the rest of the afternoon was spend being super hyper and excited for the treat that we get to experience. Kerstin making fun of me and I making fun of her because she was taking this HUGE like backpack backpack, like the size of the one I brought all my stuff in to Austria and I was bringing my little tiny like day pack backpack. Philip assisted us with collecting our climbing gear, we stayed for dinner and then we headed out! Simon and some of the construction guys were going there just to go there and so we got a lift with them.
Simon is a crazy driver. He drives as though he is on a roller coaster. It is quite entertaining. So we get to the this parking lot in the middle of nowhere and hike up to Hoffburglhutte. It was about a 45 minute hike and it was pretty steep... So it was Kerstin and I and then like 10 minutes ahead of us the guys, including Hans-Peter’s son who bounds up the mountain chatting away. But Kerstin and I had a good time, taking our time and taking pictures! We get there and of course, we had to pee so we do so and go to the dining room that where the UB students are. We walked in, in the middle of Hans-Peter’s lecture and apparently, according to Kendra we (well I really..) made a very loud entrance... but I just can’t help myself. My body doesn’t understand being quite while moving. So it was so great because the students had no idea we were coming and got excited to see us :D (go us!) So the evening was spending chilling, playing cards and taking pictures. OH! And so the room we slept in was so cool. It was pretty much one big room with one huge bed, don’t worry one room for guys and one for girls. :D
Then! The best day ever. So we got so nicely woken up by Brett and Luke saying, “Good morning Ladies, rise and shine! It is a beautiful day and perfect for rock climbing!” if it was me, I probably would have gone.. “OI wake up time.” So a great start to the day. Then I proceeded to get ready and headed outside to take some pictures of the amazingness surrounding me before breakfast, thus leading me to bring my camera to breakfast. Where I suspect I left it... As I do not recall bringing it back from breakfast as I was too excited about getting more coffee... Blasted coffee. We got all our junk and then I freaked out a bit because I realised I didn’t have my camera and I was planning on taking about 500 photos of the best day ever. But as we were hiking the 5 minute hike to the climbing garden I learned a lesson from the absence of my camera. I learned that I should just enjoy the moment and take mental images, even though they fade quickly rather than stopping doing something awesome only to take a photo, and then continue, but rather do it in one continuous awesomeness. 
Oh my word. So Martin (the head instructor guy) tells us, those of you who haven’t climbed much before (even though I have done a fair bit of climbing I haven’t outside so I included myself in this..) come with him and they were going to do the Kledishtike (no idea how to spell it.. Some German word..) which isn’t really climbing.. but not really hiking. It’s like such steep hiking that you have to clip into this steel robe that had bolts and you clip in to each bolt sorta... but the scary thing is there can be quite large gaps between bolts.. So if you fall you will sorta swing out, hit the rock and slide down to where the bolt is... Yea. Way to make the noobs so first. It was crazy. There were about two places where I just started shaking because of the height and the situation (as some of you know I can not be so good with heights..) oh man. And then at the top Heli (the other head instructor guy) got you to go across this rope bridge where you have one robe for your feet and the other above head for your hands. You are completely stretched out. At this point I freaked out a bit more.. then after you get across this you take a zip line down a bit and then you are done!! It was incredible. I was sooooo scared at some points but I was soooo enjoying myself as well. Later in the day Caroline described it as, “Well MacKenzie was crazy, she was saying I AM SO SCARED RIGHT NOW then laughed!” It was much better in person. But I love that description.
So then it was just top rope climbing! I discovered that I have a bit of a knack for climbing. Some of the instructors were like woah! I didn’t know kitchen girls could climb! For those of you who understand this rock climbing language the hardest one I did was a 5 on the French scale I believe... yea. I skinned a bit off my finger during that one on some sharp rock. But it was worth it! I also did this 4 where I had to like wedge myself in this crack. It was amazing. “You’ve gotta rock the Crack!” “I am freaking rocking the Crack!” (said in a frustrated tone as I was wedged in between two rocks) I attempted a 7... I got about half way then hung there for about 10 minutes, swinging and failing but still being awesome. In UB they make everyone take their watch off so you don’t know what time it is but we climbed from pretty much an hour after breakfast til 3pm. It was honestly the best day I have had. I cannot think of a day in the past year that was better than this day. And not to worry mother, I told Nat and Kristi that my camera was missing so they took lots of pictures and I stole/borrowed Kristi’s camera for a large majority of the day.
Then it was pretty much packing up, hiking back, chilling/sleeping (or in my case looking for my camera for half an hour..) til dinner time which was dumplings and sour crout.. Which was interesting... and the juice tasted like the orangeade that you get from McDonalds! Mmmmmm. Then Hans-Peter did a lecture and then it was time to leave! It was such a beautiful day in such a beautiful place with such beautiful people! So Hans-Peter (now going to be referred to as HP) tells Kerstin and I to get started and he leaves like 15 minutes after us but still gets to the bottom at the same time. That ninja man. He made like a level 5 rock wall look like a piece of cake! He just casual-as floats up it without a rope. You know.
So I collapsed in my bed and it was great. 15 bruises and 4 scratches later. Today was extremely difficult. I felt like a zombie. I had a nap after working in the morning and two hours later I woke up and it felt like it should have been morning and that the whole morning I spent cleaning was like a dream. It was so strange! So today would have been another awesome day to join UB but so hard.. They woke up early, hiked for 6 hours, then met Martin who gave them all their caving equipment then they hiked for 1 ½ hours longer to the cave and then it took them about 2 hours to get to the point in the cave where they will be SLEEPING!!! As difficult as it sounds I think it would just be such an amazing experience. I love caves. But I am so grateful for what I did get to do yesterday which was mind-blowing and I am hoping that in the future we will get to join them for a whole tour and not just on our days off. Thus concludes I believe my longest blog to date but the most exciting one. Hope you once again enjoyed it! Word. :D

P.s... I wrote this on wednesday... it is now saturday.. Just so you know. My internet wasn't working for a while there. :D