Skiing in the Alps!

So while some Marseillais headed to the beach to sunbathe this weekend, my host family and I headed up to the mountains for some spring skiing! My host family has a small house (that's 150 years old!) near Serre Chevalier in the Alps...we spent the weekend there with two collegues of my host dad (2 other math teachers) and some family friends (one family had two daughters 7 and 4 years old...soo cute!). It was my first time skiing anyplace other than Colorado, but after Colorado the Alps aren't too bad :) I think I still like Colorado snow better, but the Alps (at least the ski area that we were at) seemed huge! The runs seem to be a little more open and we were able to go up to the top of a lot of different peaks which had wonderful views! It's also interesting that they label their runs a little differently...they have green (easy), blue (intermediate), and black (difficult) runs but they also have red which is in between blue and black, but no black diamonds, double black diamonds, etc...I was trying to explain the diamond system to my host dad and he thought that was kind of funny :)

The town at the base of Serre Chevalier is also known for its natural hot springs and so we went to the "bains chauds" (or "hot tubs"!) after skiing. There they had two different warm pools with lots of jets (like big hot tubs) and a hamam (turkish bath...like a really really hot sauna)...they also had "les trois bains" which are three bath: one really warm (40°C) which you are supposed to spend 20 minutes in, one lukewarm bath (24°C) which you spend 10 minutes in, and one freezing cold bath (7°C) which you are "supposed" spend 2 minutes in :) (yeah right, i only made it like 10 seconds in the really cold bath!)

Here are a few pictures from the weekend: http://picasaweb.google.com/erichards20/SerreChevalier?authkey=Gv1sRgCKv8mszD2smSAw&feat=directlink