Back from Chamonix Mont-Blanc

Wow.. Where do I start for this blog? Skiing is an absolute adventure. It is an adrenaline rush, speed high, and overall fun activity. I totally loved my last week skiing in the Chamonix mountains. Now, I'm feeling really tired and I'll probably crash for at least a couple of days.

Let's start with the pictures. This was my first major test of the K100D and it performed above my expectations. I totally love this camera now. But I'll still need to build more familiarity with it as sometimes, I do make mistakes like selecting wrong ISO values, setting the wrong WB setting, setting it to Manual mode without realising it and other silly little things that spoil the picture. However, as you can see from the current image, the sky is blue, the snow is white, and everyone is a poser!!

Lots of interesting things happened during the trip. I got to meet two new s'porean friends, YiFan and ShuangNing. YiFan provided the comic relief for the group with his totally hilarious, real life, NS stories. Since she was the only female in our group, ShuangNing provided us with a common target for all our teasing. Pity her at times. But she's a good sport and constantly spaced out (or pretended to) in order to ignore us completely.

We had a totally *cool* ski instructure. His name's Jean-Michel (how could you go wrong with a name like that?). He is about 40-ish but has the heart of a 20 yr old. He didn't speak English all that well, but for some reason, like to use the word "Yahooooo" a lot. He had amazingly flowing gray hair as well. Totally dishevelled in a very cool way. At the end of the week, we all got him a nice expensive bottle of wine as a show of appreciation.

I'm happy to say that I'd survived the ski trip with nothing but a big red bruise on my right knee, which was an injury I sustained on the very first day. I crashed head-on to another person and went flying. It was a bad accident to have on your very first day. I had to rest for a bit after that as my right knee was in pain. After that, I just kept falling and falling when doing even the simplest things that I had mastered before. It was all down to nerves. I had lost my confidence and it took me several hours of skiing to get it back. But at the end of the day, I was speeding down the green slopes and having fun.

During the week, I took a day off from skiing and went up Aguille-du-Midi, which is the tallest peak in Chamonix. It is right next up to Mont-Blanc, the peak. I went all the way up to 3842m where the wind was blowing strongly and the temperature was -5C. I spent about 3 hours there taking lots of pictures. Good thing I brought my tripod along. Where other people were hauling ski equipment, I was hauling my tripod around the peak. While I was there, they had a small exhibition on the history as well, which was fairly educational (even though it was in French).

By the end of the week, I can say that I've learned the basics of skiing. I was able to tackle blue slopes on my own. I did manage to do it without falling at all once. However, YiJin, Chris and Daniel were doing red slopes and flying everywhere in the process. I didn't want to risk injuring myself. So, I decided against trying red ones. Some blue slopes are still quite challenging.

Also, I got to meet French people for the first time. Unlike most of the horror stories that I've heard of Parisians, most French people are generally quite friendly. And I even got to practice some of the French I've learned. Although each time I opened my mouth and spoke French, the locals would reply to me in English. I guess they just didn't like me destroying the beauty of their language. So, I could get away with mixing French + English throughout the way.

Anyway, I really should got to Sains to stock up on some food now. Au-revoir!