Where do I begin?

It is hard to know where to start with everything we've done, three days has gone by soo fast but yet we've done so much it has also felt like weeks. We are still having tons of fun and continue to learn more about France and the culture...especially through our dinner wine teachings! :)

Monday...
Monday was the second ski day, and Paul and Mom's first real day skiing off the bunny slopes. We packed up and left in the morning and all got our ski passes for the day (Erin and I got pedestrian passes so we could ride some of the lifts up the mtn.) Then we rode the venicular (sort of like Marta...except packed in like sardines and going straight up a mountain!) to 1600 meters in "Les Arcs." There, Paul, Mom, Dad, Sylvia and Neil started their first slope and Erin and I walked around the hotels and shopping in the area. Very beautiful views-TONS of pictures. We got to see the group skiing down and everyone did a great job. We then caught a bus (Dad and Neil didn't, they skied to the next stop) and rode to 1800 meters. There we ate our sandwiches we'd packed and got a little rest. We then all rode in a "bubble lift" all the way up to 2600 meters (figure that out in feet..it is really high and VERY COLD) It was so amazing. From there you could see the tallest mountain peak in all of Europre, Mount Blanc (also a pretty good beer!) Mount Blanc is partly in France and partly in Italy, so we could see both countries from this peak. We felt on top of the world. After some pictures, Paul and Mom decided it may have been a little high for them to ski on their second day of skiing, so they rode the bubble back to 1800 with Erin and I, while Sylvia, Neil and Dad skied all the way back to 1600 from the peak. Then we all met up and headed home. GREAT DAY, followed with a great dinner and great wine!

Tuesday--My favorite!
Tuesday was the girls day for some morning fun. Neil dropped all the girls off at 1950 where we met Danny, our husky sleigh driver!! We also got to meet, 11 beautiful huskies and got to go on a two-hour ride with eight of them. My favorites were Echa and Kincek (no idea if that is how you spell their names) who were the lead dogs. All four girls got to ride in the sleigh together as the dogs pulled us and Danny. We have so many wonderful, and funny, stories from these two hours. You will have to hear first hand from one of us to get each of our favorite moments. Including falling over in the sleigh (supposably Danny's first time of this happening- and don't worry no one, including Erin and little Logan were hurt) and watching some of the dogs act up just because they were so excited to be our running around.Danny told us many intersting facts about dog sledding and about his dogs and what each of their parts were in pulling the sled. It was a beautiful tour, and so much fun. We have plenty of pictures from this adventure too, which I'm sure will spur more memories and stories for us to share with you.

Hopefully, once we return home we can upload some pictures, but for right now the internet acts up on us and can hardly get on to type this!
The guys came to pick us up from there and we went shopping in the town of 1950. Beautiful town. Very cute and colorful, lots of shops and restaurants. If you were staying in this area, you could basically pick up your skiis at the door and ski to anywhere in town. It was in this area that we did a little hiking on the slopes to have some lunch. We ate at Les Chalets de l' Arc. A wonderful resturant in which we all tried somewhat traditional French food, it was scrumptious! When we got out of lunch we hiked back down, in EXTREME cold (at least to us Georgians!) but all of it was of course worth it.
On Tuesday we also got our first taste of a French supermarket, but at a very crowded time. We went to the Super U and got some groceries to make chili and more sandwiches for the rest of the week. This grocerie store was so strange to us, but the amount of good wine, cheese and chocolate was not disappointing!

Wednesday...
We left the house today around 10:30 a.m. and drove to Annecy, another town in France, that is a little over an hour away from Sylvia and Neil's house (the Chalet Fairclough). The town was so beautiful and luckily we did not miss the market that was visiting in town. Annecy is built around a glacier lake, you wouldn't believe how clear the water is, so it looks a little like what I'm assuming Venice would look like. Here we got to do lots of shopping and eat at a very good pizzeria, yes there is pizza everywhere! It was a very cold day, in fact it started sleeting/snowing while we were eating and when we were leaving. There are shops for everything in town, real leather, a butcher, many many chocolate shops, gifts, jewelry, seafood, ski shops, basically anything you can think of. All of these shops are set in these beautiful and antique houses all set around this river and lake. It was truly beautiful.
On the way home we stopped at Sylvia's favorite store, very much like Ikea but all with really nice wood. We all got some pretty nice gifts and other things while there. Probably my favorite shop. I would buy everything, if only I was able to get it home without spending a fortune!
Tonight, along with our wine lesson, we got our first real cheese tasting! Wow, I would be so fat if i lived here. I would be eating cheese all day. To say the least we all liked the cheese (except Erin, who couldn't have any because it was not pasturized)

I am sure I left out many details, and don't get mad if I did. I am sure we each have our own memories, but right now I'm full on dinner and cheese and having to rethink all the wonderful memories is hard to do. Tomorrow we will be on for more adventures. I think we will be staying around the house some, to rest for the long night of New Years Eve. But we will also be going on a walk around St. Bourg Maurice and the river that runs through it, as well as the town to do a little shopping. Hopefully I will get a chance to update on New Years Day. But I wish you all a very fun and SAFE New years Eve!!

¬Dana

more random findings of mine:
-French people really are not all that nice..ha
- I can catch on to some french words, but everytime someone talks to me in French, even if I know how to respond back, I respond in Spanish for some reason.
-It is cold!
-Celcius really does make more sense!
-There are a lot of round-a-bouts