Saturday, February 20, 2010

Adventure #11: Val d’Isère (SKIING!)

Even though it seems that Christmas vacation JUST happened (probably because it did) we had two weeks off in the middle of February for winter vacay. First on the agenda was seven days of skiing in the French Alps. I had NEVER skied before and I didn’t pick it up as quickly as I would have liked. I ended up taking six days of lessons and though I now feel comfortable on skis, I don’t exactly feel confident on them. For those of you familiar with skiing lingo I only skied greens and have progressed from snowplow into parallel, but I chicken out about going too fast to make parallel really work for me, but maybe with a bit more practice I can claim this as a new hobby? Either way, it was fun to try something active and new. In a marketing class with Dr. Karam at LSU we read a commencement speech (I so wish I could remember the speaker or at what college they spoke… it’s filed back in BR) that talked about the importance of being a “constant novice” and how to always be learning and living outside your comfort zone. I tried to remember that while I was falling through fences and struggling to take off my skis while perfect lines of 3 year olds were trailing past, like little ducklings behind their instructors.

My lessons were mostly in French but I totally lucked out because I was the only one in my class for four days. Pretty much got private lessons at a group rate, which was nice, since Val d’Isère is a bit expensive to begin with, mostly frequented by British holidaymakers. The weather worked in our favor, the mountains were beautiful, and the cold was manageable for the most part. Though one morning at the top of the mountain the ends of my braids were frozen white in the -20˚C weather (-4˚F… I know, right? COLD).

I went with three other assistants, one of whom found us the apartment and drove us down there (THANKS BEN!). It was a different sort of vacation, staying in one place, not feeling the pressure to have to see all these sights and museums and things, we could just hang out and goof off… fun times. Click here for visuals.

1 comment:

  1. Enjoyed the pictures...and the link to that class project video! haha, Connie.. :)
    If you get more opportunities to practice, I bet you'll be quite the skier by the time you return. Bonne chance!

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