Chris and I were up early and heading for the slopes by 9.30.  Unfortunately this coincided with all the Club Med customers who jostled and pushed their way onto the telecabine without a thought for others!  Chris was all for trying some powder skiing, having rented some Scott Missions which are fat boys (not massively so tho’) and after heading right to the top to the Cucumelle we attempted the black back down.  I could go across but turning was practically impossible and induced some heckling from some guys on the lift above – something about my derriere – I think we really need some lessons in powder skiing.  We continued to try, however, until our legs gave up and it clouded over.  Once back on the piste tho’, skiing this seemed really easy.

Back to french lessons this afternoon, having missed 2 in succession.  There were only Rick, Peter and I and the Hungarian couple.  We were also joined by a couple of young French girls who had been there last week as well.  Rick thinks they may be training as teachers.  We noticed they were giggling to themselves at some of our pronunciations and translations!

This week we went through the verbs “avoir” and “être” learning the imperfect, perfect and future tenses and completing exercises.  After the Hungarian couple had left, the two French girls passed us some small cards on which they had hand written various questions for us to try out on each other.  We all had trouble reading their writing but we persevered with such questions as what is the national animal of France (believe it or not it is the cock!) and name a French singer.  Valerie was quite surprised when I came out with Alain Souchon.  She is a big fan and did not know that he had a holiday home in our village.    

Lastly we were given a sheet of paper entitled “Nos amis les hommes” which appeared to be up to 14 women writing about their experiences with men they had known, mostly not in a good light.  Although I am usually quite good at translating, I found this quite difficult especially when Valerie made us read one paragraph and then in our own words, in French of cos, explain what they were talking about.  Rick and I both thought this was rather suddenly advanced for us and especially for Peter.  Still it gives me something to do for the next week as I shall endeavour to translate the remaining extracts.