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Published: December 16th 2006
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Hello all,
Well what busy week we have been having here in Val. It has actually gone pretty slowly and has felt a bit like being on holiday. It will be very weird when our first guests arrive tomorrow as we have taken over the chalet at the mo with beer chilling on the window sill and ipods hooked up to the stereo. I don't think we have said yet who we are living/working with. In our chalet there is Chris the manager who has just graduated from Bath and Nick an Aussie guy who was living in London. In the other chalet is a couple called Mel and Russ from Bodmin. So far all is well with no big arguments or fights to report.
The first massive event of the week was the supermarket practise run-arghhhh! Yes, I know it sounds easy but believe me, with no knowledge of the French language, buying the simplest of things such as baking powder is a nightmare. The nearest big, cheap supermarche is in Bourg St Maurice which is a 45 min scary drive away down the steep, windy and very narrow icy road in our little van. Apparently the road up to
Val is prone to Avalanches and often gets closed so I'm not sure what's meant to happen when we have 20 hungry guests waiting for dinner and the cupboards are bare???
Anyway, Angus and I struggled for the best part of 2 hours trying to work out how to find what we needed for our practice meals-ONLY 3 must I point out. There is a big hidden room at the back for chalet workers where everything comes in bulk so getting that all in the van was interesting especially with the other chalet's stuff too. Yesterday we had to go and do our shop for the first guest week. It took nowhere near as long but we ended up with 3 trolleys full. Luckily, the boys were around to lug the heavy stuff as I looked pathetic clutching my one little box of cleaning products! We are on a very strict budget and if we go over we have to pay for it out of our own money so Angus and I were up till 2am the night before rearranging the menu plan and writing the shopping list as accurately as we could with no prior knowledge of prices etc.
The unpacking was just as bad. Our kitchen is on the first floor so getting all the food up there and putting it away was a mission in itself. We finally finished at 2:30, even though we had left at 7:30am and we then had to rush off for our free skido trial...
We have quite a good deal with a skido company where we get freebies if we recommend them to our guests and so we had a free trial yesterday. A skido is like a massive jet ski on the snow for those, like me, who have never been to a ski resort before. We got the cable car up really high and then apparently there was meant to be an easy green run for us beginners to ski down to the skido hut. However, it was pretty steep and loads of fast skiiiers zooming past which made me very nervous. I ended up looking like an old biddy on a chair lift the speed I was going. Oh well, at least I didn't fall over and made it there in one piece. Us girls chickened out of driving the skidos so we got to be passengers.
I was with the instructor guy so he went zooming off which was so exhillarating all I could do was giggle. I now have a bright red face from the wind burn though and have to keep smearing my lips with vaseline! We also had to wear these little plastic hair nets under the helmets for hygiene which looked ridiculous and Angus decided he preferred his all the way down his forehead-so not a good look. The green run back was very icy and apparently closed half way down and so the skiiers had to finish on a red run. This is why Val is so crap for beginners. I would have freaked out if that had happened to us but luckily the skido woman took pity on us and drove us back up to the cable car so we didn't have to ski.
Talking of the skiing, it hasn't snowed since Sun so it's all very icy and in some places just gravel so not the best conditions at all. Mel and I had a free lesson on Thursday with a young French girl who was lovely. She made us jump and lift out legs up etc so
that we learnt to control our speed and balance. We are now confident on this one slope cause we know it and did actually end up parallel skiing rather than snowploughing all the way. However, at one point I started skiing backwards and had to make myself fall over cause I was going too fast. I now have a huge purple graze/bruise on my thigh and Angus seems to think it's hilarious to prod it-grrr!
The boys took us out the day before our lesson as we had just been given our season lift passes and so they were really excited. Mel, Russ and I are all beginners although Russ is boarding. The first challenge was the chairlift. Angus forgot to tell us to lean forward and ski off it when we reached the top so all 3 of us went flying! I have mastered it now though. The green run was so narrow at the start and had a cliff on it so it was very bad for a complete novice. Matt, you were right, it really isn't the best at all if you are rubbish and a scaredy pants. The whole saga of having to put your ski boots on in the chalet and then carry your skis/poles to the lift or bus etc is such a hassle. They are so heavy, the boots are really hard to walk in so that you look like a Robocop chav and you get so sweaty before you have even started skiing. I didn't realsie you could get a bus back from the lifts for such short distances so I walked for 2 days running and nearly collapsed. I also had to get my ski boots changed as they had cut my circulation off and given me foot cramp all day. I told the hire guy they were too tight but he just laughed at me and said they are meant to be like that but not so that your foot turns blue and crippled. It was a bit of a mission trying to explain to this French guy that I needed to exchange my boots and he started trying to give me pro skis instead-I don't think so! In the hire shop they all look quite cool and then I came hobbling in with all of the ski paraphernalia on attempting to get down the stairs and sweating away. I was so embarrassed.
The other thing that has happened this week is we have all been a bit poorly with dodgy tummies or slight colds except for hardcore Angus. I have had a nose bleed every day and apparently it's cause the air is so dry so I need to have a humidifier in our room but the radiator doesn't work? There is something called Val disease which is a phenomenon where at least one guest a week will get gastro flu regardless of how clean the chalet is and how careful we are in the kitchen. Chris even had to go to the town hall for a meeting about it. Hopefully we are now immune to it for the rest of the season otherwise we have to be quarrantined in our rooms and not allowed near the guests or kitchen for 3 days.
That's about it for now I think. We are doing some last minute cleaning tonight and stocking up the honesty bar fridge ready for the first guests tomorrow. We have the manifest of who's coming-lots of teens and one 5 yr old with parents obviously. It is quite funny looking at all the different names sharing rooms and working out the relationships between them. I think we must have worked out a whole plotline for Eastenders with our imaginations.
Right, I now need to go back and practise a chocolate tart as the last one tasted lovely but we burnt the bottom of it-help!
Ta-ra
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Rhian Cains
non-member comment
We've got a bleeder!
Hello! I think this time my message will appear on the comments board and not as a separate email. As discussed before you left .... technology is not my forte! Sounds like you are getting into the swing of things in "Val" - loved the pics!! Shame about the nose bleeds though - will they stop as you become accustomed to the severe, arctic conditions? Hope the first week of guests went well and have a lovely Chrimbo in your Winter Wonderland. Seasons greetings and all that chaff Rio xxx