It seems really bizzare to me that we took a ski lift this morning and when we got to the top we crossed the boarder from Italy into France! One of the comforting things for me here is that I can speak a little French as my Italian is completely non existant. To be fair my French is from nearly 30 years ago studying GCSE so the French is somewhat limited.
Still a really cool experience for our kids to go across the boarder and enjoy some more slopes that are varied in ability with everything from a greens to blacks even right up at the top of the mountain some 2455m above sea level!
It was a great morning on the slopes and the kids continued to make some amazing progress. A few more tumbles along the way including me when trying to help another student up but a really fun day. It is really nice seeing other people on the slopes stop and help. We had a student fall and this little girl came over with these really cute bunny ears on her helmet and she helped. This is part of the standard code of conduct on the mountains, which inlcudes giving way to the skiers further down the mountain and a few other thigs.
This map is essentially what we have covered so far. There are a few runs on here that we haven't got to either as we haven't got to them or some of the lifts were closed. The weather and visibilty closed some of the lifts as higher up the visibilty was significantly reduced. Sitting on the lift up to Les Anges you could barely see the chair in front so not the greatest conditions for skiing!
It was great spending the day in Montgenevre with a short lunch stop but the route back to Claviere was incredibly flat and required a huge amount of arm and leg work.
Every ski trip I have ever been on has an award system during each day staff keep an eye out for someone amazing or someone that has been the opposite. These in the past have included wearing a high viz to warn other skiers of their approach or something cool if you have been amazing and I decided to take this up a notch. So I picked up a couple of helmet covers. Shrek/ Ogre ears and a a blue hat with dreds. For our Shrek of the day and also cool dude of the day. So far we have awarded the following; Shrek - not bringing ski clothing, not following instructions, getting lost on the mountain (this went to our rep who snowboarded off to the next town), and the latest one for nearly falling from a chair lift, needing the toilet all day and failing to go at lunch, and then laughing at someone else falling over and then falling over whilst still laughing. These are all things that bring a smile to others and recount the day's events and other skiers also laugh and talk to us about them. Our cool dudes have been awarded for being a brilliant and caring person, great resiliance in their development, bouncing back up each time, and showing great progress.
Our evening was spent chilling out in the hotel social area, but our sixth form boys came and asked if they could go outside and have a snowball fight. One of them will have never been involved in something like this before and the others just wanted to let their hair down and have a laugh. I said yes as long as they were relatively sensible and I kept going outside and checking on them, which obviously meant I was a target each time but they just let their hair down and had some really simple fun in the snow. How could I say anything other than yes when the snow had been falling all evening. Teanage boys often get a bad rap but these guys were just having fun!
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