Snow!

I've been super busy recently- after changing families and New Years (which I spent with some kids up in a ski town)I haven't had much time to post.

Yesterday, Jan 2nd, I slept through my alarm (understandable, since the night before was New Years) and my new host sister, Caroline, woke me up at 6:40. We were out of the house by 7:10 and by 7:30 our ski bus left Sevrier for Chamonix. I kinda slept/rested for the ride, which was a little shorter than an hour and a half. Every Sunday with my new host family I'll be going snowboarding. We're members of a ski club that goes to a different place each week throughout the winter. In concept its an excellent idea, but it means I'll never sleep again. I have to wake up at 6:30 Monday through Saturday to go to school, and then 6:30 on Sundays to go snowboarding. This past week we went to Les Houches, which is on Mt. Blanc near Chamonix. I snowboarded for the three years during middle school but not at all for the past two, so I thought I'd be terrible, but really, I wasn't. The little group I was with consisted of my host sister and two of her friends, one of which was snowboarding for the second time ever- he held us back, not me. My host sister and I managed to ditch the other two after a while so we could actually go down more than two runs. The ski places seem so much bigger here. I mean, you go up one super long chairlift- and then there are another TWO you can go up if you choose. Also, they have many restaurants/ski bars right in the middle of the runs. After a long day of snowboarding we all ate this cake (I forget the name of it) for Epiphany, there was a little figurine baked into each cake (about an inch tall). If your peice had it, you got to wear a crown.

Today we had Activities Culturales in the afternoon, right now we're in a Module Creativité, which means we all got to sign up for different activities (dance, theater, film production, etc). We'll spend three afternoons learning about these things spread out every other week for the next six weeks. My group is photography, which I've always wanted to learn, but I don't think I'll really learn that much- they only had four cameras for thirty kids. He talked about each of them, showed us how they work, and then had us take turns taking pictures of each other. For three hours. It was a little long, we could've been done in one and a half, but we were outside in the park with our friends and though it was cold it was clear and pretty, so it wasn't terrible.

I'm not the only one who got an iPod for Christmas, my friend Colombe got a green iPod mini, and her boyfriend (another friend of mine) got a normal sized one. He thanked me because I told him to buy it in the US, where they are much cheaper, and he had somebody buy him one there. It saved him well over 100 Euros.