Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Touring Briancon by bus

It's been a hectic week! It started with a drive to Turin Airport to pick up my mom!! If you feel like reading more, click Car breakdown




 Mom putting on toe warmers because we have been freezing in the auto shop for about three hours. 


Italian to French to English....and a week later we still don't have a car!



 Gondola ride.

We snowshoed straight down the ski run. It seems like you can pretty much do whatever you want on the ski mountain here. If you get hurt or die, that's your problem. 












Bread, meat, and cheese shops in town. 


Old Town. 




At school...

If you are on the Ski Team you do gymnastics in P.E during the winter trimester.  Ski Team kids have their own P.E. class.

They spend the winter trimester working on core strength, balance, and flexibility. 


Students who are not on the Ski Team, play Handball, Volleyball, or Rock Climb for their winter P.E. classes. I haven't seen or heard about Dodgeball in weeks :)!



My mom and I went to the school Handball game. I haven't quite figured out all the rules but they seem to like it. Here is a short video. Handball video Funny stuff.




I've been working really hard to set up the English and French pen pals. It's been hard to figure out a way to get this partnership going without interrupting the curriculum too much. The classes are big, teachers have a lot of material to cover, and computers are few and far between.  It doesn't allow for very much freedom. This week I finally feel like I made some progress with an 8th grade (4éme) class and a 9th (3éme) class! Here is a short clip from today! French pen pal video

Saturday, January 11, 2014

School, skiing and saucissons!




School this week has been really interesting and entertaining. Here is a photo of my English only lunch table. Each day I eat lunch with a new group of students. The only requirement...they have to speak English. This particular day I had two Hugo's, Mailisse, Colin, and Alexander. 






If you want to read more about the first week of school feel free to read my journal entry by clicking here.   (this might only work if you have google docs) 









And....more skiing photos!










Monday, January 6, 2014

College les Garcins and Drew at work



Stay tuned on the school update...I'll have to put some more thought into this post as it was quite a day today.

It was the first day of school and I definitely had the jitters! I met all six English teachers and all of their 9th graders (3éme). All of the students looked at me like I had six eyes! The school has six hundred, 6th (6éme) to 9th (3éme) graders from all over the area of Briancon. Here is the only photo I had the courage to take today!  I'll post more later...



In other news...here is a pop hit from France. (Will Daly I hope you like it!)



And...Drew hard at work! 






Wednesday, January 1, 2014

First week!


I'm not quite sure what my favorite type of skiing is yet... skate skiing (ski du fond) , backcountry skiing (ski de randonnée), or alpine skiing (ski du piste).


Google map of Briancon







Les Cervieres 




Words for the day:
à bientôt: See you soon!
pizza à emporter: take away pizza 


 NYE 2014 


We went to Drew's boss's (Geanu) house for New Years and arguably the longest, and best meal of our lives. Just in case I forget...

8:00pm
Drinks: Port and some black licorice aperitif
9:30:
Broccoli soup
Carrot and squash soup
Salmon cream thing
Foie gras, Currant jam, bread
12:00am
Since we hadn’t seen the cheese plate yet, (a tell tale sign that dinner is over), we were a little unsure of the dinner status. 
Just when we thought dinner might be over with no cheese plate, the entrée came out. Canard aux legumes. So good.
1:00am
The cheese plate.

                                                                                                                                                     2:00am

 Three different desserts!
Tiramisu, cheese cake, and chocolate cake….  
3:00am
Café and dessert liquor

And… Drew and his boss's have to work in the morning!

An experience we won’t forget.