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Some of the seasonal employees at Wild Mountain this winter hadn't seen real snow before arriving at Wild's slopes.

Andrew de Villiers, a 22-year-old from South Africa, couldn't believe his eyes when he first landed in Chicago, then Minnesota, during a very snowy December.

De Villiers was one of several foreign young people working the counters and chair lifts during ski and snowboard season at Wild Mountain in Taylors Falls. It was an experience that he will always remember, de Villiers said.

He grew up in Somerset West, South Africa. It's a town on the southwestern coast of the state, near Cape Town and the Hottentots-Holland Nature Preserve.

Coming from an area where temperatures seldom dip below 0º C (or 32º F) and being thrust into a winter of more than 34 days of subzero temperatures was a big adjustment for de Villiers, who didn't bring more than a pair of felt-lined rain boots because he thought they would keep him warm.

"I thought it was a little weird seeing everything covered in white," de Villiers said. "But when it has just snowed, it's beautiful."

He shares the same sentiment as many people who grew up here - sometimes the cold is just plain stupid.

"It's insane cold sometimes," he said. "Anything under 0º (F), it doesn't matter what the temperature is anymore because it's just too cold."

He had no idea that it could be so cold that your face and lower lip start to freeze, making it difficult to talk. His South African friends had visited Maine, but they never described temperatures like this, de Villiers said.

de Villiers arrived in Minnesota Dec. 2, and expected to live at the Pines Motel in Taylors Falls during his three-month stay in Minnesota.

Plans quickly changed, however, once de Villiers attended services at First Baptist Church in Taylors Falls and met some of the congregation members.

Two of them were Pastor Kevin Schumann and his wife, Carol, who invited de Villiers to stay at their house instead of the motel.

de Villiers moved in and then quickly jumped into his new job, attending orientation at Wild Mountain and starting the same week. He was a chairlift operator, which meant standing outside in sometimes frigid temperatures he had never experienced before.

But he wasn't alone in learning how to survive a midwest winter for the first time. Several young people from Brazil were also on the Wild Mountain crew for the winter.

"We suffered together," de Villiers joked. He worked the lifts with two of the Brazilians, and made lifelong friends.

Wild Mountain Vice President Amy Frischmon said de Villiers worked there as part of a cultural educational exchange program offered to college students. In turn, American college students travel abroad to work and experience other cultures, much like de Villiers and his Brazilian coworkers came here.

Frischmon said de Villiers fit in right away at Wild Mountain.

"He's a great kid and he always had a smile on his face," she said.

This was de Villiers first trip outside of Africa. He has been accepted into a graduate program in Scotland, where he will complete his masters degree in environmental biology. De Villiers plans to eventually obtain his PhD and become a rural agricultural advisor to the South African government.

While he lives in a well-populated suburban area, northern South Africa is very rural, de Villiers said. He grew up on a farm that raises sheep, and would love to continue to support agriculture in the country.

There are similarities between Somerset West and Taylors Falls, de Villiers said. Both cities are beautiful in their own unique ways, but poverty and crime are prevalent in daily life in South Africa.

"There is a lot of poverty, crime and AIDS," de Villiers said. "But the pictures you see on T.V. that make it look dangerous all the time, it's not like that at all."

He did marvel at looking through windows at the Schumann home that have no bars, where you can see your neighbors' home and yard. In South Africa, windows have bars and most homes have high brick walls built around them.

De Villiers said it isn't because people don't want to see their neighbors.

"You can't blame the people because there is a large gap between the haves and the have-nots," he said.

Despite this, de Villiers loves where he lives and wouldn't think of living anywhere else. Still, he is excited to visit other parts of the world. He spent a few days in Texas and New York before flying home to South Africa earlier this week.

He will definitely visit the U.S. again because there are so many other places on his list.

When he wasn't working, de Villiers was able to see a lot of Minnesota, including Lake Superior, Lake Itasca, the Mississippi River, and man-made attractions such as the Mall of America, Walker Art Museum and Science Museum of Minnesota.

"We fit in a lot in three months," de Villiers said.

He also enjoyed experiences that could only be done in the midwest - ice fishing and a polar plunge. He didn't much care for the realization that he was standing on a frozen lake, and was definitely hesitant to ride in a car out on the ice. But the polar plunge was fun, and building a snow cave in the Schumann's yard was fun too.

De Villiers also captured second place in his age division at the Celebration of the Lakes 5K run in January.

When he talked about what he enjoyed most about his Minnesota trip, it centers around the people he's met.

He thoroughly enjoyed his time working at Wild Mountain, where it's more like a family, de Villiers said.

"I'm keen to get home, but I will miss all the people I've met," de Villiers said. "They call it Minnesota nice, but it really is. I'm feeling homesick for this place already."

Everyone he worked with at Wild Mountain was always so accommodating, helping de Villiers get to and from work, or anywhere he needed to go. He plans to stay in touch with people he worked with there, and definitely with the Schumanns and other congregation members he came to know as his extended family.

The Schumanns said it was their pleasure to have de Villiers stay at their house, and would welcome him again. But maybe next time, de Villiers will want to experience Minnesota in the summertime.

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