Chalet Girl Foam Wrestling

This week has flown by ridiculously quickly! I spent my day off on Wednesday skiing with one of my colleagues - a 'ski companion'/ ski guide- and some guests over in Le Fournet, before enjoying some wine tasting in Val D'Isere. How civilized. We then headed to the Folie Douce and headed home at around 6pm - skiing in the dusky twilight - just in time for dinner.

On Wednesday night a 'once-in-a-season' event took place in the Underground Bar beneath our hotel. It is known as 'chalet girl foam wrestling' and, I have to admit, when I was asked to get involved I very firmly declined. I just wasn't really interested in participating in it because it is degrading to women and it doesn't really fit with my morals or principles. Boring I know. I didn't like the idea of so many sleazy men looking on at me while I competed without really gaining anything from it myself.

So although I wasn't wanting to personally participate I did go along to watch my friends give it a go. There was a foamy pit full of suds and each of the two competitors were given a sock. The object of the game was to remove your opponent's sock first. All clothes remained on, everyone was having fun and it wasn't skanky at all. It was just good, clean (and soapy) fun.

The bar was short of competitors and my colleague Janine who I get on so well with - and who was as adamant as I was that we wouldn't get involved - soon decided we'd compete against each other. Janine, who is from South Africa, took the stage-name 'Springbok' and my name was 'The Kangaroo'... how original of us. Our foam wrestling was spread over three rounds - round one I won, round two Janine defeated me and, in the third round, although it was ridiculously close, I managed to triumph. It was a huge amount of fun and I am really glad I did it in the end! A big buzz. Here are some of the photos:

The Kangaroo

Then, on Thursday, it was my roommate Sarah's 19th birthday. We all celebrated by holding an off-piste birthday picnic in the glorious sun. We had loud speakers, lots of food courtesy of the chefs, and some ice-cold beers. That picnic embodied what this ski season is about. It was unbelievably chilled and so much fun. We followed our picnic with a nice ski over to La Daille and the Ski Tranquille area of Tignes.

Regardless of the severe lack of snow here (there are exposed rocks and patches of grass all over the slopes) we are still in good spirits and are soon expecting some 10 centimetres of snow. Hopefully there will be much much more to come because my journey to work and back each day gets more and more slippery and I am now falling daily on the ice sheets.

Tomorrow is changeover day again and hopefully our guests next week will be lots of fun. We are expecting a large group of firefighters who like to party so I'm thinking it should be an interesting week. In the meantime... please pray for some snow!