Day 52

Woke up around 7.15am and made my way down to breakfast by eight.  Legs were feeling okay but my back and shoulders were quite stiff and sore.  All of us agreed perhaps we would have been wise to take it a little easier yesterday but at least we had lots of practice before the classes today. 

We met our instructor (and the rest of the group) at 9.15am.  There were thirteen of us altogether – two Swedes (Matt and Lise), an Australian (me) and ten Frenchies – a mixture of girls and boys.  Our instructor, Julian, was very French but also spoke quite good English so we weren’t completely in the dark the whole day.  There were times when he’d say something in French that took about 2 minutes to say, then give is about two sentences in English as a translation but all in all it was okay.

I chose a class that was one level below my riding ability – partly to be in the same group as my new friends, and partly because it gave me a chance to have more fun and not concentrate on getting to the bottom in one piece all the time.  By the end of the day I was sure I’d made the right choice.

The weather was better than yesterday – skies were a little cloudy but the sun was shining through nonetheless.  In fact, at one point I saw that the current temperature where we were was +15°C.  I felt very overdressed with my thermals and beanie on and took my gloves off at the end of each run to cool down on the lift ride.  Given the temperature, the snow conditions in the morning were much better than later in the day, when the snow was much heavier, wetter and ‘slushy’.

Headed out for après ski at a bar/restaurant in the village with some of the people from our Swedish bus group.  Had a couple of pints there before heading back to the UCPA for dinner.  As luck would have it, it was Italian night in the kitchen.  Spaghetti bolognese with parmesan cheese, a bit of salad and vanilla ice cream with warm choc fudge topping.  Mmmmm…

As I mentioned yesterday, I managed to break my camera.  I was carrying it in my pants pocket and somehow managed to break the LCD screen at the back.  The camera itself seems to be working as normal but taking photos with no viewfinder is not very fun.  I didn’t take it out with me today, which was a shame because the scenery is just beautiful.  They’re predicting a sunny day tomorrow so I might take it with me and see if I can get any shots worth keeping.  It will kind of be like the ‘old days’, when you couldn’t check to see if your photo was any good until you got the film developed - except I won't be able to see what I'm shooting, I can't change the settings and using the zoom will be impossible...