Ski Weekend at Courchevel!

I finally got a photo of my family! Christine (left) and Pauline (right).

 There's a photo of Pierre below. 

Well I just got back from skiing and Courchevel was awesome! I'm very lucky because my host mom's parents had bought an apartment there when she was 8, otherwise it would've been pricey. I've only skied two times back in middle school (which was mostly bunny slopes anyway) so I pretty much knew nothing once I got there. There wasn't a single cloud on Saturday and it was beautiful. Huge mountains surrounded the place and they were dotted with small towns. I rented skies and shoes there for 45 euro and bought a half day mini ski pass (meaning for only a section of Courchevel) for about 19 euro. Pierre taught me the basics and I picked it up pretty quickly, despite a few good falls. That night some of my family's friends treated us to dinner at a nice restaurant called La Fromagerie. It was very good and was basically a delicious salad, some other small appetizers, potatoes, and this amazing melted cheese that the waiter just kept serving us. I'll put a photo of it below. The restaurant was also in the expensive village/area of Courchevel where Porches and BMWs literally lined the streets. All the stores there had designer's goods and our waiter said that the hotel in the area costs upwards of $4,000 per night!

The next day I got a regular full day pass (about 42 euro). I spent the whole time with Pauline and Pierre, who are both experienced skiers, and we basically went right to a black ski run (from easiest to hardest: green, blue, red, black). To make things worse it was extremely foggy and I couldn't see more than about 50 feet in front of me, which for me isn't acceptable for black runs! It turned out okay despite falling a couple of times and losing track of the course twice (which meant walking in knee deep snow trying to find the course markers). But I survived and it was an awesome day with about 6 hours of skiing. One thing that surprised me was that we never had to wait in lines for lifts and we were sometimes the only people when doing the red and black courses. I think this was because the entire ski area is so big, as I mentioned in my last post. There were varying degrees of fogginess and some snow the rest of the day. Unfortunately this was awful for pictures and I hadn't taken my camera Saturday, but here's some of the few I got.

Standing next to the ski jump complex of the 1968 Olympics. It's a 2 minute walk from the apartment.

Out the window of the apartment. That's the fog at the top, there's the first ski lift on the left side. You can see the top of the ski jump platform just above the rightmost building. 

 Pierre found just how deep the snow is on our way back to the apartment

The slopes! (and fog)

I thought this was pretty cool. At the restaurant the cheese was from this giant half cheese wheel which is being heated by this toaster thing. When it melts, the waiter scrapes off the melted layer and serves it to one of us to eat alone or with baked potatoes. It was very good