What's French for "whiplash"?

In the summer of 2005, I parted with 100,000 Northwest frequent flyer miles in order to attend McNab Snowboarding Summer Camp at Les Deux Alpes, a glacier in the French Alps. It was such a great experience that I knew I'd do it again once I moved to Europe.

I just came back from my second trip to Les Deux Alpes (and second post-McNab side trip to Lyon), and once again, thoroughly enjoyed my holiday, though it meant consuming half the box of ibuprofen I'd bought at the start. 6 days of repeatedly throwing oneself off a jump in a desperate bid to land a cool trick is a joyous yet painful experience.

Thanks to the marvelous coaches at McNab (including Jenny Jones, who might well turn up as one of the few non-American women invited to the X-Games this year), I'm now nailing frontside 180s. Sadly though I seem to have mysteriously lost my ability to perform switch 180s -- which I could do, albeit not beautifully, before this trip. There was one day where I managed three gorgeous backside 180s in a row. It's all on the McNab video; okay, so I don't have a copy of said video, but there are witnesses to back me up. I need proof, since one day later, I couldn't replicate the feat.

Again, I was hanging out with a crew of Brits & Scots, all very friendly and sweet. There were only three female campers, and two of them were there with their boyfriends. So it was perhaps a dubious honor when I won the Women's Big Air competition on the last day (similar to when I won "Best American Camper" 2 years ago, and I was the only American camper there!) The prize was a brand-new North Face jacket, so I'm not complaining.

In addition to the trick contest, on the morning of the last day, the coaches held their infamous McNab Derby. This was no ordinary speed competition. They clicked all of our boards together in a big pile, and then they faced us in a line. When Neil called "Go!", they tackled us as we dove for our boards. Then we had to race down the mountain to the train, ride the train back up, and tag one of the coaches who was wearing a bright orange jacket. I had trouble extracting my board from the pile but made a decent showing in the race portion -- despite a number of slow-moving obstacles on the hill such as the people riding the t-bar. Boarding the beginner-strewn runs with my speed-addicted skier friends at Heavenly is good training, as is weaving around trams, cars, other bikes, and tourists on my bike in Amsterdam.

On Saturday, while almost everyone else either stayed in Les 2 for another week or took a flight back home to the UK, I went to Lyon. It was my second visit there, and I really love it. It reminds me of Philadelphia, where I grew up. A small city, with acres...sorry, meters...of shops and restaurants and bars and cafes. No major tourist attractions like the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, so it's often overlooked by tourists. I didn't have time to do the tour of the covered walkways or the silk-weavers house. I did have time to watch Die Hard 4 dubbed in French though. Um, why did the bad guys kill off all the computer geeks? Oh never mind, I'll watch it again in English some day.

I also rented an electric bike. You can turn the dial to "Off", "On", or "Eco". I never figured out what "Eco" really did. But when you clicked to "On", it felt like someone was giving you a tiny push from behind every 30 seconds or so. Fabulous for biking uphill. Not so good if you start with the "On" setting, like I did once accidentally; the bike started to go without me so I almost fell off it. Once I got the hang of it, it was no problem. I even answered my mobile phone in the middle of biking to the park and had a 5-minute conversation, during which the other bikers on the path gave me hard stares. They all had two hands firmly on both handlebars. I guess it makes more sense to do so when you have hand brakes. In the Netherlands, I could be cradling a baby in one arm and smoking a cigarette with the other and hardly anyone would notice.

Lyon has a great bike path along the Rhone River, with floating beer gardens along the way, and a giant park that compares favorably with Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The park has a little zoo, so I'd turn the corner on my bike and suddenly be within a few hundred meters of some elephants, lions, or a giraffe. There's also a beautiful Vieux Ville, with quaint narrow staircases going up into the hills. And while most people are willing to speak English, they were also willing to speak French, if it looked like I wanted to speak it -- and even if I spoke it badly. A nice change from Amsterdam, where I'm thrilled if I can convince a shopkeeper to speak to me in Dutch for 2 minutes. My French improved by miles...oops, I mean kilometers...in just one day. Though I have to admit, I had a 15-minute conversation with my taxi driver during which I was convinced I understood everything he was telling me about his mother, only to find out that the whole time he wasn't talking about his mother at all, but the mayor of the city. In other words, "le maire" and not "la mere".

Oh. Merde.

"ick ben moo"

That's how you say "I'm tired" in Dutch. So what do the cows say then? The cows say "booooo". I also found out that a Dutch pig is a "big".

Whores are "hoeren", to rent something is "huuren", and to hear something is "hooren". So you have to be careful when you say: "Yeah, I hear that". If you're a man and you mispronounce "ja hoor" (which is actually a very common way of voicing agreement here in Holland), then you just might get pushed into the nearest canal.

Speaking of canals, to the Dutch, the Panama Canal is still a canal. But a canal in Amsterdam is actually a "gracht". You might also have a favorite "kanal" on television. And did you hear the one about the tourist who accidentally dropped his camera into one of Amsterdam's (famously dirty) canals? When he was finally able to fish his camera back out, the film was already developed.

Barumpdum.

Just a sampling of the many random things I learned last week at "the nuns course": the famous language school in the southern part of the Netherlands, which was founded by the Sisters of the Holy Order of St. Augustine. When my company first told me that they were sending me there, I pictured sleeping on a bare cot with a wooden cross hanging above it, stoically surviving on a diet of bread and water, moving silently through open courtyards, and studying rigorously from morning until night.

The only thing I got right was the last. It was indeed 5 days of intensive Dutch language learning, but we slept at a luxe hotel nearby, and every morning a bus picked us up at 8am and dropped us off at a modern new building with a very corporate feel. During our frequent coffee breaks, we were offered cappucinos, espressos, and fancy tea. During our afternoon snack breaks, the spreads included such delicacies as steak tartare and salmon mousse.

We had classes all day from 8:25am (the Dutch would literally say: "5 minutes before half 9 in the morning") until 7:15pm, at which point we were served a fabulous 3-course gourmet dinner accompanied by excellent wine until the bus returned to pick us up at 9pm. Back at the hotel, most of us would gather at the hotel bar and talk until after midnight.

While Americans were the biggest group, there were still only 5 of us learning Dutch. The rest were from: India, Taiwan, Germany, Finland, Libya, Sweden, Romania, Kyrgyzstan (okay, I'll admit I had to wikipedia that one), Chile, Uruguay, Australia, the UK, Scotland, and South Africa. There was also a large contingent of Dutchies learning Italian, French, Spanish, and German.

One of the Dutch guys who joined us a few times at the bar was a dairy engineer trainer. He asked me whether I knew that California had recently surpassed Wisconsin in the production of cheese. I told him that I didn't know that. "Well..." he said, "Wisconsin knows".

So how much Dutch did I actually learn? A lot. But still not enough. It's still a struggle to form sentences. I only started learning past tense on the last day, and my vocabulary is very limited. And I still don't get word order at all. Last night (back in Amsterdam), I tried to carry on an entire conversation in English, but using the Dutch word order. I was only able to handle about 5 minutes. I want Dutch really to learn but think I that explode my head will if it I try it too long to do. My friend claims that the language was invented by Yoda.

By the way, in Dutch, I could never say "my friend" unless I meant by that "my boyfriend". If I said "me and my 5 friends", I'd be admitting to leading quite a promiscuous lifestyle. I have to remember to say instead: "a friend" or "some friends".

Well it's now 8 minutes before half eleven at night (that is, 10:22pm), and I'm getting moo-er by the minute. Goodbye for now and "slaap lekker!"