| Mar. 30th, 2007 @ 02:59 pm finally! a finished LJ about my holiday! |
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Current Mood:  happy
right so i feel its time to post about my holiday, but this is going to be a huuuuuge post and take ages so itll have to be in parts.
my holiday started at about 5 o clock on friday 16th march when i got to university. i signed in and left my bag in a pile of other bags. i had to move my car so i went off and did that. around this time i started to feel a bit lonely. everyone else was in groups of people and i didnt know anyone so i went off to the library and went on the internet for a while. after about half an hour i decided to stop being a wimp and go find people so i went off to falmer bar where everyone seemed to be. immediately i found a couple of groups of people who i knew and who were on my bus so i hung around with them for a while. at 7ish our coach arrived and we all piled on. i found someone i vaguely knew to sit with and met MJ, my roomate who sat in front of me and we chatted a bit! we got given party bags for the bus which was awesome. they had lots of nice food and condoms and stupid things like that in them. the trip to dover only took about an hour and a half which meant we were able to get an earlier train that we thought we would, this put us in a good position for winning the race to les arcs. i should now take a sec to explain the busses competition. because there were 5 busses of people going on the trip an interbus competition had been devised. each bus had a name, which was based on a decade..we were the 70s bus and there was also the 50s,60s,80s and 90s busses. basically there were a lot of different competitions and we got points for each one. the bus with the most points were the overall winners. so yes, one of the things we got points for was being the 1st to get to the resort. unfortunately the 90s bus managed to get on the same ferry as us so we had some competition. the ferry was a bit mental. some of the guys had bought beer bongs along so there were people chugging beer everywhere. then they realised that other people on the boat were people on a ski trip with warwick university so immediately they challenged them to a boat race. for those whom are ignorant to boat races they are basically a downing relay..you have like 5 members of a team who each have a pint and the first person downs their pint and the second person has to wait for them to finish etc. anyways apparently we beat warwick. on the boat all of my roommates gravitated together and we all had a proper chat and stuff which was nice. we also all met a guy called rich who was running around drawing stars on everyone's faces in permanent marker. sian and nicki, 2 of the girls in my room, were medics, so a lot of other medics wondered over and said hi at various points.
the ferry journey was only about an hour 20 so we were soon back on the boat, but everyone was a little bit drunk and continued to drink when we were back on the bus. some drinking games were played and we all got pretty pissed which was a good ice breaker. eventually everyone started to fall asleep. we were awoken at about 4am when we stopped at a service station. everyone got food, water etc. after we got back on the bus they put anchorman on and everyone drifted in and out of sleep for most of the day. we got to the town of bourg st marie at about 1 o clock and stopped at a supermarche to buy our food for the rest of the week. i was pleased to discover my roommates had similar food tastes to me..apart from sian who is a freaky vegitarian..hehe. so we bought loooooads of pasta and some noodley stir fry type bits and bobs and 2 HUGE bags of apples (pink ladies are sooooooo cheap in france!:o))the high point though was of course the booze, i bought 3 bottles of wine, a bottle of fizzy wine and a crate of 24 kronenbourg..awesomeness. there was a lot of fun racing to get everyone back to the coach in time so that we would leave in front of the 90s coach, which would have basically guarenteed us the race to resort win. unfortunately some people from our coach let us down and 90s got away before us, despite members of our coach attempting to sabotage members of their coach by stealing their shopping. when we got to the resort we had a few hours of waiting for our room keys to arrive which was really boring and shit. eventually got into our room 6ish and claimed our beds. i made the best decision managing to inadvertantly shotgun the fold out double bed! i was very chuffed with myself. we all unpacked and had showers then made some dinner (burgers and salad) in the eve we had to go and pick up our lift passes and find out about our lessons etc. we got bored pretty early and were all knackered so we went home and had some sleep.
the next morning i got up early to go and get some snowboarding done, however when i got up to the top of the slopes i realised the binding was broken on my board, which meant i had to have a very embarassing trip back down the mountain on the chairlift with some mountain rescue man accompanying me, becuase apparently you're not allowed to go down on a chairlift by yourself :oS the mountain rescue man was very talkative, and made a point of attempting to chat me up in a broken mixture of french and english. particular gems were "you should get a french boyfriend if you want to learn to speak french better" and "this is not a free service. you will buy me a drink tonight, yes?" i managed to get away and get back to the hire shop where they fixed my board, then on the way back to the slopes i found MJ and went up with her. unfortunately she couldnt even get the hang of standing up on her board so i spent most of the morning slowly edging down the slope with her, until my friend merrie turned up, on skis, and i decided to leave MJ and go down with merrie. after one really fun run with her we decided to go up to l'arpette- the restaurant everyone was advised to meet at for lunch. the route to it was really horrible though, and i had to keep getting off my board and walking becuase it was too flat and i wasnt good enough to build up speed.got there eventually and found most things included cheese and there was a half hour que for food. joined it anyway and had some very nice spaghetti bolognese (had to ask for it with no cheese though of course!) after my spag bol i had to mission it down the mountain as i was late for my lesson. at the start of the lesson we were put into groups according to previous experience, ability etc. cant really remember the lesson that well. i think they may have started trying to teach us turns but meh..who knows. that night we ate pasta i think, then it was the bottom of the garden social. as the name would suggest we all had to dress up as something you'd find at the bottom of the garden. my costume was a cat but most people were faries or gnomes or something similar. we all got very nicely drunk that night and made loads of new friends, so it was a good ice breaker. here are some pictures:
before...
...and after!
the next morning i felt a tad dodgy, but i made myself get up and hit the slopes. was too tired and out of it to really do anything though. think i did about 3 runs then went back to the room for lunch with sian where i had a very nice nap. in my lesson that afternoon they split us further into another 2 ability groups. i was in the top one, which i was pleased about obviously,that lesson was quite hard, and i felt a bit like i was struggling compared to the rest of the group, especially since there was a bit of a blizzard and no visibility and we went up higher than we'd been before. i felt very pushed to do better though so it was a bit of a blessing in disguise. that evening was chill out night so we invited a load of people to our room and we had some stir fry and strawberries and ice cream and stuff. weirdest moment of the evening was when rich was joking about and playfully threw a spoon at harry, and harry jumped up and started trying to hit him, it scared everyone a bit, but rich and steph difused the situation really well. in all it was a fun night and everyone went home at about 12 so we got loooooads of sleep and were refreshed for the next day!
the following morning i had promised harry i would go and do some runs with him (before the weird hitting incidenct..but i didnt have anything else to do so i still went along) we met up with my friend nick who was in my lessons and a guy called gareth who was on snowblades as well as tom who is a really nice guy and harry's friend. we went right to the top of the mountain on this horribley fast chair lift and did a really nice powdery red run. i worked on my turns quite a bit too. harry kept making us go along these horrible flat paths which i hated. think i went to l'arpette for lunch again that day, met up with sian and nicki and the whole possee and had some chicken and chips. made it back in time for my lesson which was a really good one and i didnt feel like i was struggling anymore. we went off piste loads through really thick snow and i even did a couple of jumps and goofy turns and things like that. felt really elated after that. went back to the room and probably ate pasta then got ready for the pajama party social. i was really tired at the pj party although my costume was awesome, but i still stayed out till pretty late, just quite sober. i think this was the night that nicki got quite drunk and chris and i had to escort her home whilst she giggled continuously..that could have been a different night though. they all merge into one a bit. here is a picture of us in our pjs.
hmm..not sure what i did the next mornning. think it might have been the day that i headed up the mountain by myself and worked hard on my turns and stuff, went back to the room for lunch. had a pretty disastorous lesson that night, kept falling and smacking my head and eventually smacked it really hard against a chair lift and felt totally out of it, so i got moved down to a different group, which only had one other guy in it. it was nice taking it a bit easier and by the end of the lesson id got my confidence back a bit and was doing quite well, had got my turns back properly etc. that night was our fondoue/raqulette meal thingy so immediately after my lesson i headed up to l'arpette. found the route there a lot easier than i ever had before which was good. when i got there i still felt a bit dodgy and my medic friends diagnosed me with a mild concussion. i set to work drinking to dull the pain, i also took lots of silly pics:
me and rich doing snow angles
everyone doing the nicki face
everyone doing the Jo face
an arty, self taken, shot of me looking out of the window!
after a while they started bringing all the cheese and free alchol out. both of which excited me greatly as you can see from the following pictures..
me with everyone's free bottle of wine. thats right, we got one each!
me with A LOT of cheese
after a very nice salad to start, we all had little heater things on our tables and they bought us out a half cheese each and a plate of sandwich meat type things. i was even more excited..
mmm...yummy plate of cheese and ham
we were told that only one other group had ever finished their whole cheese which of course was a total challenge for us. it was hard, but WE DID IT! and beat everyone else from our uni to it too. after that the competitive spirit was within me, so when tim came around and asked if anyone was up for an intercoach boat race i agreed. i was pretty immense at it, and finished my pint without hesitation but the 90s bus still beat us. it was soem time after this that i realised id lost my wallet. due to being pretty drunk this resulted in me turning into an ugly crying mess. after having a bit of a tantrum for about half an hour someone found my wallet and i thanked him profusely and was then able to drunkenly dance to bohemium rhapsody feeling very happy. then came the hard part- we had to snowboard down the mountain by a torchlit procession. i actually did quite well and didnt fall over or hurt myself or anything, just took it slowly, and at least i actually did it unlike MJ who asked to be taken down in a snowmobile thingy! at the bottom me and nicki realised our other roommates werent down yet but thought we'd go back to our room anyway, only to find that neither of us had a key. at this point nicki started to go a bit weird. she was complaining about being really cold and was sitting on the floor shaking, then she started crying. even though she was the medic i decided that her blood sugar levels were low and chris, who is also a medic but a 4th year one so he actually knows quite a lot now, agreed with me. we tried to persuade her to eat something sugary, after all we'd eaten loads that evening but it was pretty much ham and cheese, not anything that would provide you with real energy, and nicki had pretty much been snowboarding all day with only a half hour rest. eventually sian got back, and also said nicki should eat something sugary byt she still didnt want to becuase she was full so in the end we made her squash with warm water and she started to feel better almost immediately. despite this, the next morning she woke up barely able to move her arm and one of her legs and decided she was going to have to have a day off. i also awoke and felt a bit dodgy, probably a combination of the hangover from all the free wine, eating far too much cheese when my body hadnt had any for a good 2 weeks, and a result of my mild concussion. so basically i decided to stay in until my lesson and keep Nicki company, although she slept for most of the time. my lesson that day started off quite unsuccessfully..due to the fact id not practiced that morning id forgotten a lot of stuff and my turns were really rubbish again, plus i was having real trouble with toe edge which was mainly what was wrong with my turns. i soon got it all back though and we did a couple of really really nice runs, i really enjoyed it despite being knackered. went back home afterwards and most likely had pasta to eat and of course started drinking. that night we had hoodie night at this small rock bar, which sounded really nice and chilled out after all the nights of intricate fancy dress etc. i drank a bottle of red wine before i went out too which meant i didnt have to buy any drinks whilst out so it was a nice cheap night. at the rock bar there was a band who were doing lots of covers relatively badly, but they did 2 bon jovi songs in a row and countless other classics so i enjoyed it nonetheless.
half way through some of the comittee members got on stage and announced some awards. rich won one for being generally kind and friendly and stuff..the 70's team also won the slalom, even though most of the race team was on the 90's! After the bar closed we went on to the red hot saloon, which is the late bar, where there was also a band which was playing an almost identical set, but better! everyone rocked out again
dont remember what time we got back that night etc but i had a really good time and had nicely sobered up by the time we got to bed. i was glad i wasnt drunk, because it meant i wasnt hungover the next day, which was the day that nicki and rich and co were going to take me out to do some hard runs and stuff. we got up really quite early and met up with chris, steph, tom, charlotte and rich. here is a nice pic of us outside the hotel:
we went right up to the top of the mountain and they did a red to start and LOADS of off piste stuff which was a lot of fun. everyone took loads of pics of us mucking around, these are some of the best ones:
us at the top of the mountain
me looking excited about something
me sitting down. probably knackered after all the crazy stuff they'd made me do!
me actually boarding but leaning really weirdly, no wonder my turns suck, there's no way that putting my body weight there could be productive!
me and nicki being "dangerous!"
the most fun part earlier on in the morning was the boardercross track we did, basically a small course designed for boarders to race on. i obviously didnt go as fast as nicki and rich and stuff but i did some really good carving and was proud of myself! i felt quite bad becuase i was generally holding the group up a bit but nicki told me not to worry. after a while steph and charlotte disapeared off to watch the freestyle competition and nicki told me she was going to take me to a black run- which basically means a really fucking steep mountain. the first one we tried to go to noone liked the look of though, except rich so he went off and did it by himself whilst the rest of us made our way to this other one. it was absoloutely fantastic. i didnt go down very fast becuase obviously it was too steep but i made my way down and didnt spend hardly any time sitting down and just sliding on my bum which is what nicki had told me to do if i got too scared. it had this wonderful bit where the path went through a kind of valleyish thing with high slopey walls either side so you could practically ride it like a half pipe. i got down to the bottom before the others somehow and was really glad id done it! after that nicki asked if i wanted to go to the snowpark, where there was some jumps and rails and stuff. we went there and i did 2 of the blue jumps but didnt get enough speed up to get up the other 2. on one of them i got a bit of air and landed it afterwards which i was very impressed with myself for. after that i missioned it down the mountain by myself becuase the others had gone for lunch at l'arpette and i'd promised sian id meet her back at our room becuase she didnt have a key, so i went and had a rest and some nice food. that afternoon i didnt have a lesson. instead it was the begginers slalom. after my crazy morning i was feeling incredibley tired and almost didnt have the energy but i cant resist a good bit of competition plus it was our last day so i didnt want to waste it. the begginers slalom was quite informal. we were told we didnt have to do turns, we could just do falling leaf if we liked, but i wanted to give it a go and despite being crap and falling over a couple of times and letting my technique go out of the window, i was still one of the only begginers to even try and do turns which i think got me some respect. rather than the course being marked by flags or whatever is normal, the slalom was actually marked by members of the committee standing around. the idea was that the team who made the least committee members move to avoid being hit was the winner. our team won yet again for being generally awesome. after the slalom i was absoloutely knackered and deicided just to do one more run alone then return my boots and board. it was very emotional doing so, and afterwards i had to go and buy a chocolate crepe and a beer to comfort myself. got back to our room and started trying to do some packing/cleaning/tidying type tasks, as we were supposed to be out of our rooms by 8 the following morning and i didnt think i fancied getting up really early after a night out to pack. we did do quite a bit of cleaning but as a group lacked the motivation to really finish and ended up drinking instead. i finished my crate of kronenbourg and hence completed the wall of beer that we'd been working on all week:
we didnt have any food left, and decided to go for a room meal to the tex mex restuarant that was under our hotel. since it was a room meal and we'd adopted rich into our room he obviously came along too and chris appeared in our room about an hour before we planned to go so we invited him as well. i had beef and chicken fajitas which was lovely. chris, who we'd nicknamed "stomach of steel" after the amount of cheese he'd consumed for the sake of the team, decided to have some ridiculously huge triple burger thing, on the menu it said he got a free shot if he finished it, which of course he did, so that was quite exciting. after that we went back tot he room and started putting on our final fancy dress costume: decades night. we had to dress up as something from the era that our bus was named after. i was a 70's punk and nicki and sian helped me by cutting holes in my clothes and putting safety pins all over me etc
everyone in the room getting ready
eventually we were all ready and headed to meet everyone else in the foyer
us waiting for the lift..
when we got down to the foyer we found a lot of INCREDIBLEY drunk people including the chairman tim, who was also our bus captain, barely able to stand. he was dressed as the guys from a clockwork orange and it was actually a really good costume, but his drunkenness was a lot funnier. at the first bar we went to one of the ski alpine reps pulled my aside a bought me a free shot for my incredible fancy dress effort which was cool since i had no money at all and couldnt afford any more alchol all night. i also encountered in this bar a punk's mortal enemy- a hippy.
we all ended up in the red hot saloon as normal and i had to remove my fake peircings becuase they were hurting. we did lots of dancing and specifically looked after an incredibley drunk girl called nick who'd been in my lessons. nicki bailed and went home quite early on and whilst i was tempted as id sobered up i decided i couldnt do so on the last night and instead went on to the only club on the resort- apocolypse. it was shit in there for a sober person so i stayed about half an hour and probably got back around half 3. setting an alarm for the next morning wasnt fun when it informed me that i was to be getting 3 hours and 50 minutes sleep. ouch. i decided that at least i could sleep on the coach. oh, at some point that night we were also informed that the 90s bus had won the overall busses competition and that chris hadnt won the most improved skiier award which we all thought was total bollocks so that was a shame.
the next morning when we awoke we were all feeling slightly tired and worse for wear, as you can see:
despite this it was actually the most beautiful day yet outside and nicki wished she could be out boarding as it was perfect conditions. here's some pics of the view from the balcony of our room:
we managed to tidy and clean quite well. the last thing to be thrown away was of course the wall of beer. we then started taking things down to the coach. we had a free hour or so after that so with the tiny amounts of euros i had left i bought myself a chocolate brownie and some drinks for the coach, as well as a nice looking camembert which didnt go off till quite a bit after lent ended and a nice little handmade chocloate easter egg for my mum.eventually we all piled on the coach and set off. rich announced that he had managed to steal the 50's mascott- a kermit the frog hand puppet which was entirely mutilated. since the interbus competition was over this didnt count for anything real but it was a bit of a victory anyway. we hung it from the roof of the bus just to add insult to injury
the mountain path down was very pretty and i tried to take some pics but harry's head kept getting in the way:
becuase one of our bus drivers had had a heart attack over the course of the week we only had the one driver, this put us at a distinct disadvantage for getting home before the other coaches, which was made worse when our coach driver decided to go and visit the other one in hospital and we were stopped for a good hour. for somethign to do, we all got drunk on free fosters which tim was supposed to have given out on the journey there. we then realised that the toilet wasnt working and we all needed to pee. luckily we stopped at a service station soon and i had a big lunch which i put on my card. less drinking happened after that which was good becuase we didnt stop for about 6 hours. some time during this part of the journey tim got up and announced some bus awards, and i won a pair of really really nice skiing goggles for "being an awesome begginer and generally getting into the spirit of the trip" or something like that. i was very happy! eventually people started gettign bored and falling alseep so we persuaded tim to put on the back to the future trilogy and rich found a couple of bottles of crappy wine to kill some time. we watched all 3 of the BTTF films back to back and eventually got to the ferry port at about 2 in the morning. i was starving as i hadnt eaten since lunchtime, but bttf was keeping me positive. everyone else was pretty grumpy..this was made worse when they made each and every one of us go through passport control meaning that we missed our ferry by 5 mins and had to wait an hour and 20 mins with nothing at all to, as the terminal building place was shut. when we evertually got on the boat we had full english breakfasts and headed to duty free to stock up. we were all incredibley tired and grumpy:
rich tried to liven things up a bit by appearing in a pair of edible underwear:
but noone really had the energy to respond although i halfheartedly ate them off him:
after that the ferry docked and we got back on the coach. i slept most of the way home. we arrived at about 6 in the morning and i drove to my house in brighton which was cold and deserted. despite the hard times and the slight shitness of the journey etc it was still one of the greatest holidays i've ever been on and i CAN'T WAIT to go again next year!! |
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