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Published: March 16th 2007
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Felipe
Felipe and danger go hand-in-hand. How is everyone doing? I've got a lot of entries to catch up on, and since school is actually getting somewhat busy, i'm going to do my best to get them finished for you guys!
So in about the 2nd week of March, a bunch of the international business students as well as a bunch of French students all went on a 5 day skiing trip in the French Alps! The place we went was about a 2 hour drive from Lyon, and was called Villard de Lans - fairly close to a city called Grenoble, and for you hockey fans, this is the hometown of Christobal Huet.
Anyway, we arrived on a wednesday, and the plan was to ski from thursday till monday and then leave in the afternoon on the monday. Now the way the French organize these trips is pretty different from trips in Canada; in essence, they don't organize. We had a nice introduction of the inabliity for the French to organize when it took us almost 2 hours to get from the University campus, into the bus with our luggage, and on the road; frustrating to say the least. Anyway, once we got
on the road, we were all really excited to get to the hill and get ready for some skiing! The ride there was fun, and involved several bus ride songs - there's the ESDES song, with lyrics in French, and there's the masterpiece called the "Emilie Schmidt." This one was created by the Argentinians and involves wagging your fingers in front of your mouth - like the femmoustache that one of our teachers (Emilie Schmidt) dons - while singing "We all know, Emilie Schmidt, Emilie Schmidt, Emilie Schmidt" to the tune of "We all live in a Yellow Submarine." I think we sufficiently freaked out the French students with that little number. Also, Felipe found it necessary to keep people awake ALL hours of the day by letting unsuspecting people - namely me - almost doze off, and then just at the right time say to them: "hey men (he'd say "men," not man - blame it on the Argentinian accent) are you asleep?" You have no idea how annoying that is when you're about 5 seconds from being fast asleep. Even my rock-hard sleeping ability couldn't withstand Felipe.
Anyway, we got to the slopes later that day, and
Felipe & I
Doing snow angels!! then came the free-for-all. When we paid for this trip, we were told that for our fees, we would have a place to sleep, lift ticket, food, and then a few parties/gatherings during the trip. When we got there, the people organizing the trip had bought groceries from the grocery store, and the grocery store had delivered all of the food together in one bundle. There were some issues with portions - our room was comprised of 8 males, while most rooms were comprised of 8 females - of food being given out, and when the Argentinians found out that we were about to receive as much food as a room of 8 girls were about to receive, they started carting food out with reckless abandon; these guys really don't listen to authority, which is a difficult thing for the French organizers to stomach. We all thought that our room wouldn't have enough food for the duration of the trip, but we managed to ration everyting pretty well - although it took a strict diet of 2 meals of spaghetti per day to do it.
The other concern was the little amount of snow on the slopes, because the
winter has been extremely mild by French standards. The hills at the base of the mountain were totally bare, and we were all worried that we wouldn't have enough snow to ski and snowboard. Thankfully, once we got up to the higher regions of the mountain, there was enough snow to ski, although a lot of the slopes were closed. All in all, we had a great time skiing, and my limited skills on the slopes improved once again - I had only been skiing 4 times prior to this trip.
One last story. When we went to return our ski/snowboard rentals, Martin (the Argentinian) was worried because he REALLY did a number on his rental snowboard. He cracked it on the edge and it was basically irrepairable, so as we knew that we were probably going to get a nice lesson in the French way of handling disputes. As Martin walked into the shop, Ben and I handed our snowboard and skis - respectively - to the manager and all was fine, but then as Martin handed his snowboard to the manager, he took one look at it, threw it on the floor in despair and cried out:
"putain!!" For those of you who don't speech French - or delight yourselves in learning French curse words - "putain" is the equivalent of "whore." In the end - after some negotiating and Martin saying to the manager "try to be a little more nice motherfucker" - Martin ended up having to pay for the snowboard.
Ironically, the last day of the trip it snowed
all day, so I suppose our timing could have been a little better, but all in all, we all had a blast, and I will definitely attempt to get out skiing at least a few times this coming winter. Sorry for the lateness of this entry!!
Oh, and before I forget, there are some pretty suspect pictures of Danny in here (our friend from Ireland). One night - after a few whiskeys no doubt - Danny suggested (let me make this clear, he didn't agree to this, he suggested it) that Anni could put makeup on him, and as he put it: "this is the only time i'm going to let you do this!" Danny then proceeded to attempt to molest me, and when all is said and done, I don't think i'll
Ski Trip
Martin, Felipe, and some random dude. be paying Danny any visits in the "comfort" of his own home.
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