I warn you, this blog is super long with lots of photos to make up for all the days I have missed.

Floc the snowman! with feet!

 

I am writing this in the past on the 27^th of February, because where I am staying at the ski lodge there is no internet, and I have forbidden myself to go to an internet cafe because surely I can go a week without internet? I have departed with the rest of the family to Italy to do some skiing. Not just my family of five though, as we are also meeting up with Anne’s twin sisters’ family at the lodge.  Her name is Isabelle, her husband is Lloyd, and they have three kids, Thomas 11, Mathew 9, and Chloe 7. These kids are incredible to me because they are all trilingual. They speak English, French and now German. Isabelle also speaks Italian and another language I can’t remember.  Lloyd is American and met Isabelle in grad school and all the kids were born in America. Then they lived in France for 4 years, and 2 and a half years ago they moved to Germany. 

THE EXTENDED FAMILY!

(in order: Charles, Isabelle, Lloyd, Chloe, Me, Mathew, Jean, Julie, Thomas, Anne)

Where we are staying is incredible! And the drive here was also incredible. It took about 8 hours and in that time we travelled along the south east coast overlooking the Mediterranean ocean and across the border into Italy. The landscape was spectacular as we headed into the mountains (the Alps). They were towering up on either side because we were driving through a valley and there were castles built on the top of some smaller mountains so they could look out over everything. There were towns on the side of the hills with vineyards growing on such a steep angle.

I thought I would be snowboarding with jean, but I am very happy that I am actually skiing, because after my first day on skis it’s pretty evident that I’m not very good in comparison to all these euro peeps that started skiing when they were four... I’ll continue this blog in the morning because I am about to go to bed and I feel kind of sick.

THE VIEW

Good morning, it’s the 28^th back in time!?!?!? This morning was a bit confusing. I didn’t realise the shutter on my window was closed so when I woke up and it was still dark, I assumed it was still super early. I couldn’t sleep though so I got up while being careful not to wake jean and Julie who were sleeping in the same room as me. I went to the bathroom and turn the light on after I had closed the door so I wouldn’t blind them. When I opened the door I forgot to turn the light off only to see that their beds were empty.... and when I got to the kitchen, the sun was pouring in every window and they were sitting around munching on their special k bars and muesli! Silly me.

So, today I’m off for my third day of skiing. My body is aching all over, but I’m still very excited! I’m feeling slightly crappy but once you get up there you forget all your troubles and focus on not hitting a tree and killing yourself. This place is just incredible. I feel like I have stepped inside a post card.  I have to go skiing now but I will continue my blog when I get home. 

THE FAMILY

I am home!! Sorry this is a very disjointed blog. I possible just had the best skiing day yet. You have to catch the gondalow/lift-thing/egg/cabine that takes you up to the top on the mountain and over to the other side. Isabelle and Anne both suffer from vertigo and poor Isabella had her head in her hands with eyes clenched closed so I broke out into song about 1/3 of the way up to try and distract them... “Why do birds suddenly appear.... every time you are near? Just like me, they want to be close to you”. That got them going!

TAKEN FROM THE GONDALOW :)

 (that is the town we stayed in called ortesei)

We reached the top intact and went for a couple of runs down the mountain before our lesson at 2. Charles and Jean had ventured off on an epic journey through all the mountains to discover new tracks because they are already pro and all the 3 littlies had lessons of their own that went all day. That meant it was just Isabelle, Lloyd, Anne, Julie and myself in the lesson that we had booked. There was debate over whether I would be at a high enough ski skill level to join in – we all had to be at the same level to do a lesson together, and we wanted to do a lesson together because we got a really good deal. Lloyd described me to the instructor as a “more-advanced beginner” and the rest were intermediate. I had worried about this, but the day before I had improved because of some tips that both Lloyd and Charles had given me. Anyway, by the end of the 2 hour lesson, the instructor said I was the best at the technique she was teaching us and that it was surprising I had only ever skied twice. So now Danika is a very happy, more in control skier who has less chance of hitting a tree!! And I am falling over less now too - I only fell over once today.

HMMM. THAT LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THE EASIER RUNS.

(i did a few blacks!!)

The amount of walking and skiing I am doing is amazing, but the food I am eating is meaning that nothing is changing body-wise... unfortunately, when walking in the ski boots it is really painful. The first day I hired the equipment, I got the same skis as jean because we are the same height and weight... lol... the ski rental guy (who happened to be a very attractive Italian guy who as good at making conversation) asked me what kind of skis I wanted and I said “ones like Jean... good ones”. So today at the lesson the ski instructor told me “they are very good skis that make you go fast but they are heavier than regular skies – but that’s ok because your big and strong”. I don’t know about everyone else but I think only guys like to be called “big and strong”.

MALE FASHION OF TODAY IS SO POPULAR (AND REDICULOUS)

... THAT THEY MADE A STATUE FOR YOU

I am loving spending this holiday with everyone, including Anne’s sisters family. They are really warm and welcoming and the kids are great. They are similar ages to my cousins back in Australia so it’s really nice to have little guys around again. It’s actually the 29^th today. I stopped my blog suddenly yesterday because we had to go upstairs to Isabelle and Lloyds flat to have dinner (we had spaghetti cabonara) and we watched some slapstick French comedy about skiing which I didn’t understand but I’m used to that now. I was feeling quite sick again so I went to bed BEFORE DESSERT (which was crepes)! And now here we are - Its breakfast and I just had muesli and yoghurt. Isabelle rocked up with some crepes filled with nutella or sugar and lemon, so I had a nutella one of course! Now I am getting ready to go skiing again. The only thing that hurts today is my calf muscles.

crepe's with nutella....

It is Jeans 16^th birthday tomorrow, so that is pretty exciting, and it is my 18^th on the 17^th of March and It is my step-dad Jeff’s birthday on the 15^th. So Happy birthday everyone!

I miss home. But I love it here. Home sickness has officially knocked on my door, but it’s ok because it just wants a cup of tea and then it will be on its way. I made some new friends on impulse in Aix last week. I can’t remember if I blogged about it and I can’t check due to the lack of internet but I saw them busking and so I went up to them and introduced myself, and that I would love to have a jam sesh one day. They gave me their number and we were texting that night (I had to use google translate to understand and then respond which worked rather well) and we organised to meet after school the next day at the same place where they were busking previously. They were late and I contemplated leaving because I thought they had set me up haha. But they came! And I had the best afternoon! They sang really well and we were doing on-the-spot harmonies and they sounded sick and we weren’t even really busking but we pulled a little crowd and got a few euro. Then we went and found some sun and we ran into a whole bunch of their friends on the walk. They started singing and harmonising in French while we were walking through the crowds of people who were watching and smiling. it is helpful that they sing mostly English songs by artists that I know. They know Ben Harper and jack Johnson and this one boy asked to use my guitar and I was like “aww sorry, it’s left handed” and turns out he was left handed too! I got home at 6 that evening.

this is actually my friend Sam who is an american exchange student living in a town 15 minutes away.

out to lunch with Sam and yes... i am dipping some wort of chewy donut into nutella.

Ok back to the holiday topic! Yesterday the 31^st of March, I went skiing only with Jean, Charles and Thomas because I was now ‘turtley’ enough to be in the turtle club. I was able to keep up and face the black runs with only minimal fear, because I was considerably more progressed after my lesson. However, during the day the temperature reached something idiotic like 18 degrees, and the snow on the hills facing the sun was beginning to turn soft and sticky. We had 40 minutes to get home and were therefore in a bit of trouble because all the chair lifts were closing at 4:30 and we still had many more to catch to get back to our village, so we had to get moving or as Charles joked “we’ll have to sleep under one of those trees”. At the top of one mountain after getting of a chair lift, we realised that a guy had just proposed to his girlfriend at one of the most splendid views in the whole range.  The sun was setting so it cast a beautiful orange glow over all the white ice... my description of this is probably not that accurate because my goggles have orange lenses so for the last 5 days I have been skiing in a world of Fanta. But anyway, he was a pretty classy fella to Propose at such a smashing location.

AND HERE THEY ARE!

its a hard life getting stranded here.

Unfortunately, disaster struck! Going down the same run as where the couple got engaged, I tripped on my own ski and did a dramatic face-plant-rolly-polly and twisted my knee. Thomas was behind me so he saw it, but jean and Charles were ahead but 40m. Jean stopped, but Charles was around the bend and out of sight. I know the problem was that my boots were too loose, but I have had the same thing every day. If I tighten them so that they don’t wobble, eventually the blood stops going to my foot and I get a bad case of pins and needles which means I can’t feel how much weight I am putting on that foot or anything – it’s terrible! So I have been skiing on relatively unstable footing because it’s the only way. My knee was ok, but it was loose and painful and I couldn’t put all my weight on it, so skiing to the bottom was a very slow process. And then we caught the next chair lift and went down the next run, one step closer to home. The place where the track split in two, we went right when we should have gone left, so we had to go back to the top and do the run again, all the while I was trying to ski on an imperfect knee and we were running out of time (the sun was setting and there was literally no other people on the snow fields except for operators). When we got to the bottom, the inevitable happened. The operator said “sorry this lift is closed”. ... That was it; we were stuck miles from home in a land of snow. You won’t believe it though, of all the places we could have been stranded, we were standing right next to the most adorable motel/restaurant.

 I was dying of dehydration so I went and bought a big coke for everyone and a beer for Charles, and we got some hot chips. Eventually Anne and Lloyd came and got us. It was a 25km drive up a mountain and through snow, so they weren’t too pleased, but the drive was beautiful anyway and I got to watch the sun set over the distant Alps.

here are some shots from the drive home:

  i was trying to take a photo of our city when we were driving down the mountain...

 and it did not work, but i like it.

Every night since we have been here, the kids and I have gone to the local pool which has a spa, a sauna, a donut-shaped pool which has jets of water to make it go around, a slide, and a regular 25m lapping pool. It also has too kids pools with a playground in one of them. Not to mention the donut pool is outside and it is heated so all the hot water vapour rises into the cold air. You enter it inside and swim under a flap and then you are outside! So cool. We had to walk there last night, and then Charles would pick us up at 8. I literally packed a towel and wore my swimmers underneath my jeans with some extra undies for after we got out, but we got a call from Charles when we were already there letting us know that we were having dinner in the restaurant above the pool at 8. Therefore I looked like a wet dog with only a sports jacket over a bra and some jeans in a family restaurant with no makeup on, not to mention the gigantic bootys I have been using to get to and from the ski hire store before and after skiing... not my finest moment.

After some fabulous pizza we went and watched a ski show put on by all the ski instructors in this town we are staying in. When we got there I took out my camera to record all the tricks and stuff they were doing and one of the Italian supervisors took me to the front of everything so I could get a better shot – I was literally on the snowfield in front of the protective fence. And that meant that all the other kids and stuff came up with me too. This is all thanks to my great looks you know - here is some footage.
i tried to upload some footage but it didn't work :(

Today is the 1^st of March and it is Jeans 16^th birthday. We all went skiing up in the other side of a completely different mountain and of course I FORGOT MY CAMERA AGAIN! We were looking at some of the most beautiful views because we were so high up but I didn’t capture any one them. I totally forgot that my phone in my pocket had a pretty decent camera but I didn’t have my head screwed on. Skiing was a little painful today and I am particularly tired, so I considered leaving the others and finding my own way home again to just chill out on the couch and eat chocolate and watch TV or something. I felt like bludging, and honestly I had lost my confidence after my fall yesterday so I wasn’t going as fast. My family persuaded me to stay because we were going to have lunch and then we would all go home after. We were meant to me with Lloyd and Isabelle too, but the cable car we came up in at the beginning of the day proved too much for Isabelle’s vertigo. Even I thought I was a touch dodgy. It was one big cart held by only one cable which carried 46 people or 4700kg and you could just see it getting lower and lower in loading bay as the people were getting on, then they had to squeeze the doors closed around everyone. It looked like a Japanese subway. We ended up skiing until 4:30 anyway because that is how long it took to ski back to our starting point. The last run we did was so long that it took us 40 minutes to get from the top of the mountain to the bottom. There was a choice of taking the cable car but we all decided to ski. I wish I could calculate how many km I have done each day. Now after a lovely bath, we are all going out for Jeans birthday dinner.

I am definitely getting closer with Julie. We are understanding each other better now, and laughing about stuff so it feels good. Tomorrow there is no skiing we’ve decided, and instead we are going tobogganing! Hopefully I’ll get the camera out and film some “on the go” footage. I wanted to do that while I was skiing but it just got to difficult.

It’s the morning of the 2^nd and I’ve just had my muesli and am watching the French news. Dinner last night was really interesting. We went to a restaurant suggested by Lloyd because he knew the chef. It was a restaurant where we didn’t order anything and instead the chef cooked us what he felt like cooking. Our first meal was an entree with a mixture of hand-made pasta. There was ravioli, gnocchi, and the third one looked like little nuggets of already chewed chewing gum. However, it was all delicious... actually, I have just realised that if it is edible for me, then it’s delicious.  The next meal was a soup which was really hearty and had oats in it. It was a warm comforting grandma soup. Next course was pork which had been slow cooked with potatoes and the final course was an apple strudel which the waitress brought out with candles on top to celebrate not only jeans birthday but mine and Chloe’s too. So we all blew out the candles together, and then they brought out some presents. Jean got an iphone 4s from Anne and Charles and I can’t remember what he got from Isa and Lloyd, and Chloe got a selection of French books that looked really cool, and then they gave me some presents! I got a really nice handbag from Anne and Charles so I would have something to take to school (because that is the fashion over here – you take handbags to school) and I got a pair of local hand-made slippers from the village we are staying in from Isa and Lloyd which I am wearing as I write this. I have decided not to go skiing today.  I think 6 days of skiing is enough, and I am going to spend the day with Anne, Charles, Isa and Lloyd. Julie has also decided not to go skiing. Instead we are going to watch all the three littlies compete in their end of ski school competition. See you later!

It’s later.... so guess what!! All of the kids got within top 3 of their class in each race they did and there are 10 kids within each class. Thomas got gold and Chloe and Mathew both got bronze, so that was really cool for them.



sexy....

Thomas going for gold!

Mathew with Bronze

and Chloe with bronze too!!

 Anne, Isa and I went shopping after the medal ceremony and I was on the prowl for a pin or two to stick on my rotary jacket to remind me of this holiday. I ended up buying three. One was a wood carved love heart with another love heart inside painted with the Italian flag.  The second was a bit stupid because It said “official ski/sex instructor”. I think this is a necessary reminder that ski instructors are so good looking!! the third was one of the iconic native flower.

SUPER-CUTE MINI MOON BOOTS

Then we went to an INTERNET CAFE for lunch so I got to check my facebook, hotmail etc, and there was an email from APRA telling me I had got my first royalty payment!! So I checked my accounts and I had a payment of almost $200, so I’m pretty happy with that! Not sure what I was expecting in terms of quantity, but to me it’s free money. I also got to tell mum how much I miss her along with everyone else. The truth is, I had a moment today.... just the slightest thing triggered me to feel on the edge of tears all afternoon. Chloe was finished with her pasta so Jean and Julie were stealing bits from her plate and when went to, too, she said “no”, and I was shocked. I realised that I am missing my own family and the closeness we had which I still don’t have here yet because it takes time. It wasn’t her fault for my reaction, I just am vulnerable to that sort of stuff because I feel isolated for a fes reasons... the language, . Especially with the language too.i feel like I have no idea what is going on because I don’t understand what is being planned, so I am sort of just going with itmy afternoon has been pretty flat since then. Chloe, Jean, Julie and I went to the pool and I didn’t feel like playing any games or even swimming, so I kind of just laid there or went and sat in the sauna. Then I wanted to go home, but I didn’t want to rush the others. I went and showered and changed and was going to go back into the pool area and sit on a deck chair to wait, but when I got out there the pool guy said no because I had to be in swimmers... I don’t even feel like blogging because I am whinging and whining and it must be unpleasant for you to read. So I’m going to stop, go to sleep and wake up fresh in the morning.

I miss my mum and all my family back in Australia. Crap, just typing that sentence and I am crying haha. Night and I love you all xx

P.S tomorrow we are leaving Italy to go back to France at 10am, so this should be posted by tomorrow evening along with lots of photos.

So this morning we went to a cute Italian restaurant for breakfast and they brought to our table baskets of bread and plates of butter and marmalade and honey. Then they brought out literally trays of salami ham, and another covered in all different types of cheese like brie etc. And that was breakfast along with some coffee and guava juice.

Then we hit the road and I watched “Wayne’s world” number 1 and 2 and played cards all the way home. My went back to Pourceiux which is where our other house it and stayed overnight – we had takeaway pizza for dinner. I stayed up till about 1.30 getting back in touch with the world. The next day Kim and Terri came over and they are friends of Anne and Charles. They have two daughters so speak English and French because Kim is American. They ended up staying for dinner two which I was very pleased about. Then this morning we headed back to Aix and here I am! Finally my blog is finished and you are reading it. It has been a working progress for the last week or more. Lots of love and until next time! Catcha. Also I have another week of holidays before I have to go back to school! Yay.

Danika xx