Week 21 - Half Term Ski Trip

Being the novelty English girls in a French ski resort.

This week the school holidays continued (that's right, the French get two weeks off in February) and it was time for an eagerly anticipated trip to the mountains with Niamh. We'd booked to go to Orcières, a cute resort not too far from Avignon/Montpellier.

It didn't take us long to discover the resort was very French - we were pretty much the only English people in resort - a refreshing change for a ski trip. In fact, being English actually worked in our favour when hiring skis, as we charmed our way into a sweet deal with the super-friendly man at the ski hire shop.

Although we'd managed to book a cheap room in a chalet hotel, the fact that we wouldn't have a kitchen hadn't quite crossed our minds in the excitement of it all. However, being the thrifty, creative students that we are, we managed to get by self-catering in rather ingenious ways - toothbrushes doubled up as cereal spoons (just for the first morning at least) and the sloped roof from our skylight became a fridge/freezer (although coming back after skiing one day to find our ham and cheese had slid off wasn't the best discovery).

We really couldn't have asked for better skiing conditions - the best snow of the season apparently! We made the most of the bluebird days by shredding the pow until close every day, only stopping occasionally for a demi and some schoko bons, and finishing the day with a swim at the pool.

Day 1 of skiing and on one of the first chairlifts of the week Niamh and I ended up next to a group of French boys. Murray, who was sitting next to Niamh, explained they were there on a uni ski trip and had to complete the challenge of kissing a girl on a lift. Was there any way we'd be able to help them out? It was Valentine's Day after all. Such a charmer. We renamed this chair the Love Lift for the rest of the trip.

As the week went on we had another encounter with some French boys who we arranged to go for a ski/board with, followed by drinks over the Chelsea-Paris game. We met up with them a few times and enjoyed some good French bant #classiqueReblochon.

We also got up to date with gangster language such as wesh alors, which is a pretty popular expression right now thanks to hip-hop artist Jul's hit single:



Thursday night we went for a night out at Yeti, Orcière's finest discotheque, with Joan, Nico, Francois and the rest of the gang after apéro at their apartment. Despite the lack of sleep, Niamh and I were up and out to hit the slopes hard on our final day before reluctantly giving back our skis once the lifts had closed. As it was our last night, we treated ourselves to a meal out where we ate our bodyweight in raclette. On s'est fait péter le bide - literally ate until our stomachs burst! Goodbye drinks with the boys before packing our bags ready for our 5am BlaBlaCar back home the following morning.

Back to reality now as half term's slowly drawing to an end and I've got lessons to plan!

Bisous,

Katie x