Ski Weekend Cinq

Another weekend of winter, and another weekend of skiing. The question you may ask is, after all the falls and bruises and laughing, how do I continue to get Soph to go skiing with me? Well, let’s take a step back and look at the progression of Soph’s skiing adventure…

Jan 19th: Soph has her first European skiing experience; she falls within 8 seconds of the first run, has trouble getting up, and continues falling over the next 2 hours. We eventually eat lunch, and she quickly falls again afterwards, encouraging her to quit for the rest of the day.

Jan 26th: Rather than ski, she comes down with an illness. The jury is still out on whether or not it was real.

Feb 9th: We go again, and Soph tries to convince everyone to stay at the restaurant during lunch. We get her out a few times, but finally she has enough and leaves the slopes a little early.

Feb 10th: Soph goes out on her own and hits a bunny hill, but she continues falling and secretly decides she hates skiing. She tells me she will never be good, and that I have to accept it and love her anyway.

Feb 22nd: She has a nightmare about skiing. It involves her, well, skiing, which is why she considers it a nightmare.

Feb 23rd: We try to go skiing, but due to traffic, we turn around halfway into the trip. As we turn around, a noticeable happiness engulfs Soph, and she immediately starts having fun and being her normal cheery self.

Feb 24th: She has another nightmare about skiing, only this time, she’s being chased on skis, by zombies.

Mar 4th: Christina and Jordan are visiting, and express interest in skiing in the Alps. We take them, and Soph tries a few times to get us to turn around, but to no avail. Once there, however, she makes it down the first run without falling. This continues throughout the day, and suddenly she "kind of likes" skiing.
Mar 9th: She actually suggests we go skiing, so we venture on our own to a mountain that’s just about right for our skill levels. Throughout the day Soph is consistently heading down the hill ahead of me, making crisp turns, and even ventures onto a side path or two.
And that’s where we stand today; I have to say that I’m very impressed with the turnaround, as it came out of nowhere. By the end, we were skiing some moderate-to-hard blue runs and she was tackling them fairly well, and considering she’s only been skiing 4 or 5 days, without any true lessons, I think that’s pretty good. She might actually be better than me at this point, depending on how you judge skill levels, so I have to give her credit.
That being said, what’s the lesson in this? Well – apparently, if you pester your spouse hard enough, they can learn just about anything, no matter how much they hate it. So keep pestering! Anyway – enough about Soph – she accuses me of making fun of her too much on this blog already, and the previous few paragraphs aren’t going to help my case…

So as I was saying, this weekend we went to the lovely Swiss village of Villars-Gryon for yet another wonderful day of skiing. This was our first "solo" trip, which was kind of fun, especially since we’re now at a point where we can stick together on the slopes. The weather was once again beautiful, with the sun shining brightly and amazing views of mountains all around. It’s really hard not to enjoy being up in the mountains like that, and while skiing is by no means the greatest thing ever, it’s still pretty fun, just for the fact that you’re outdoors and concentrating on something basic such as staying on your feet.

Anyway, that wasn’t the only thing we did this weekend, for a village nearby was hosting a Chocolate Festival! Gotta love chocolate festivals! So of course I made us go, and of course it was a complete letdown, but we did buy some good chocolate that we probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. There’s something about huge crowds of people expecting free things that turns me off; it was a complete madhouse. However, it did get us out of Geneva for a few hours, and the chocolate, while readily available from any number of boutiques within Geneva, was the best I’ve had so far in Switzerland, and possibly ever (as much as I hate spending 2 bucks, or francs, on a piece of chocolate, it really is good!) So that was fun.

One last note – if you haven’t been checking the currency rates lately – and if you’re normal, you haven’t – then you haven’t noticed the recent power surge of the Swiss franc. Yes, that lovely currency I use for all my daily transactions has had an increase the likes of which haven’t been seen since, well, for awhile. As of today, it’s trading 1 to 1 with the dollar! To put that in perspective, when I moved here, the franc was at 84 cents; now it’s at 100 cents. That’s a 19% gain! So while that’s bad news for all of you who are coming here to visit, it’s good news for me, since I have more exposure to the all-powerful franc than that third-world currency you call the dollar. As an added bonus, when I come back home now, I’m more likely to spend money, thereby helping the US economy – gotta love economics!

Next weekend: Final ski weekend!