viva la france

Fourth day in France and already have encoutered skiing injury.

Firstly, I always get nostalgic being back in France. Takes me abck to a girl who was 18, untouched (virtually), naive and full of the promise of a crazy twenties ahead of her. Me when I left home to live here. A girl I can relate to, but cannot remember. A girl that was very different to the erm...lady...bitch? I am now.

Anyway we arriv in Meribel after an epic midnight flight to Chambery, to find a lovely chalet, full of middle aged people. Fair enough 'Keith and Sheena', and 'Edmond and Hilary', despite being a few generations older than us prove to be good fun anyway, quaffing carafe after carafe of wine every dinner.

For a French ski resort this place sure is saturated with Brits. I'm not getting to practice half the French I'd like to. There are just Poms everywhere, even our staff. Which are luckily our age and who we have already done a few pub crawls with. Meribel nightlife is notorious in the Three Valleys, the best there is.

And I'm addicted to vin chaud/mulled wine and toffee vodka.

Nothing sorts out a hangover though than getting onto an icy ski lift and throwing yourself down a mountain of fresh powder. For end of the season we've already had two huge dumps of snow. It's beautiful. So beautiful your face aches. That could be the cold too.

I'm fully fleecetastic this week. Fleece everything.

So I started to feel pain after working hard at grinding away moguls after the powder fall. It's hard work as you cannot see where they are, especially in a blizzard. The Brit is boarding; I'm skiing so we're both trying to make our way down the slopes in our various fashions while falling over all the time, because we're catching air over the bumps. Face planting and such, but him being a boy, they just pick it up so fucking quickly, and us girls are left still getting scared of bumps and ice and steep slopes.

Anyway, so my tendons got all inflamed and the pain was shooting through my legs to the point where my legs fucking seized up on the slopes yesterday and had to limp to a medical centre where they've strapped them, doused me with pills and have to wear special soles in my boots. Can only ski again tomorrow, while the Brit is carving it up in Courcheval this morning. Bleak.com.

So am going to grab a deckchair - they have them on the slopes, no kidding - and will drwon my sorrows and stupid tendons in mulled wine.

Stupid tendons.