Skiing at Bonascre!

Wheeeeeeeee! Sorry for the lack of updates, I haven't really been up to anything exciting until this past week. Exams were the week right after I got back from break, so that was a nice welcome back present...or not. They were pretty hard, I'm looking forward to seeing my grades, but I have no idea when they will be posted!

So two exciting things have happened since I've been back: Eiko (one of my roommates from last year) came to visit for 5 days, and Annie, Christine, David and I went skiing in the Pyrenees for a week!

Eiko's visit was great. She was doing a little European tour to see a bunch of friends that are studying over here, so Toulouse was the 2nd stop. We walked around, and went shopping (lucky for us, the semi-annual sales were going on when Eiko visited!), and of course, partied! It was so great to see her, and it made me really excited for senior year! Wheeeeee. That picture is of us, enjoying the beautiful weather on the banks of the Garonne.


Second awesome thing of january (so far): going skiing for a week at Bonascre, in the Pyrenees! Annie and Christine have an internship at SupAero, the premier aeronautical engineering school in France. Every year, SupAero takes the first-year students (who are our age) on a week of english immersion and sport, and they use native english-speakers as interns to help with the classes. Since there are only 2 interns this year, SupAero asked for 2 more students from Dickinson to come. Obviously I volunteered, because it was only the sweetest deal EVER. A week of skiing, staying in a hotel with a jacuzzi and sauna, delicious food, and meeting really cool SupAero students...all for free? Done. SupAero has its own chalet in Bonascre, so 60 students stay there, and the rest of the students stay in apartments throughout Bonascre. And the professors and interns stayed at the Hostellerie des 3 Domaines, which was the cutest little mountain hotel ever (see the view from our window, above). The food was out of this world, and the jacuzzi felt amazing after a day of skiing! So our only "job" was to teach english for 3 hours each morning. We were each paired with a teacher, who had planned the activity. Unfortunately, the teacher I was paired with had a death in the family right before the trip, so I ended up doing my class with Andrea, Alan, and Pierre, who are first year students at SupAero who are native english speakers. My game was "The Weakest Link", and the students wrote the questions and then asked them to each other. Everyday I just danced around the room and talked with the students and made them think I was crazy. I think it was a good method. And since SupAero is like, 99% boys, having 3 cute american interns was heaven for them. That sounds conceited, but it's true. We would go out to parties, and just be surrounded by the guys, because we were the only girls at the party. Fun! ;-)

(at the top of the mountain on the icy Thursday)

I ended up taking 2 afternoons of ski lessons, and then it rained on Wednesday, so we did english class all day, and then skied all day Thursday. Unfortunately, because of the rain, it was rather icy on Thursday morning, which was really rough on my feet and legs. Thursday afternoon was better, and then Friday was good too. It was pretty much the sweetest life ever. We were always really dirty, and we ate delicious food and hung out all day long. AMAZING. And we made some new friends, so hopefully we'll hang out with them in Toulouse!

Now I'm not looking forward to starting classes for the 2nd semester this week (they actually started last week, but I was kind of busy...) ;-) But oh well, c'est la vie. And I have so many fun things coming up! Bisous!