Christmas Lights and French Lessons

Our little town of Les Carroz d'Araches is starting to shake off its winter lethargy and get ready for Christmas. Shops are starting to re-open and the sidewalks are littered with empty boxes as they unpack their winter stock. The council workers are also busy hanging beautiful christmas decorations above the roads and from the lamp-posts. In the left hand photo above, Graeme is standing outside one of the village's quaint gift shops . It has the most exquisite homewares we've ever seen! We expect they do a roaring trade during the peak winter season.

Today was our first French lesson. We have given up trying to find a proper language school. The French have an interesting take on sales. We had left our contact details with a number of language schools in the local area, sent emails and even had Liz follow up in French, but to date we have still not received a response. We know that they are open for business as we have visited their premises in Cluses and made an original contact by phone. But the ol' follow up doesn't seem to be a priority here. Finally, Liz has kindly offered to teach us. She already tutors a number of people around the village, but she was pretty full up and I don't think she was that keen to take us on. Teaching french to beginners must be very tedious. But as luck would have it, some of her students have deferred their course and she has agreed to take us on. I'm not sure she really know's what she's in for.

This morning we learnt the alphabet, days of the week, verb conjugation (good grief!) and made a start on numbers. We already have some of these basics, (learnt over the internet) but our pronounciation is dreadful. Liz is helping us with this, and also teaching us French grammar and sentence structure. After Day 1, I only have one major comment. What's with the french number system? Why on earth would the number 74 be the english equivalent of sixty + fourteen and even more bizarre - eighty five being "four twenties + five". Makes no sense at all. Maybe this helps explain their banking system...see my earlier blog entry about our banking experience.

Speaking of banking - we did have a minor victory. Graeme went to the bank before lunch and asked our friendly bank manager for our account balance and to transfer our rent money from our account to our landlords - all in French!! Truly! I was there as a witness. He had been intently studying the Lonely Planet phrase book all morning and he must have said it correctly as Frederique (we're now on first name basis!!) understood. Well we hope he got it right and we have not transferred the money to Fred's personal account? Hmmm?? Maybe that's why he was so happy???

The afternoon was spent skiing (non-skiers tune out after the next photo) and then home to clear the drive of snow. Graeme is now a whizz on the snow thrower! But you already know that if you have been following this blog!!

After all that exercise we've taken a fancy to a little glass of beer before dinner. Our particular favourite at the moment is a Belgian beer called Leffe. Not only is it quite tasty, it comes in a tiny bottle. Just enough for a little glass after skiing. C'est parfait!

Tomorrow, weather permitting we are off to Italy to ski at Courmayeur! We haven't got an italian phrasebook....could be interesting!!

Warning: Mandatory Ski Report. Another 10 cm fresh powder this afternoon! Nothing to do but grab the gear and walk up our hill for a fun run down through the trees. Today we cheated a little and instead of going bush, we climbed up one of the Les Carroz ski runs. We got so far up we actually joined the next resort called Flaine. The run home was a good'un. Photo is Gra heading to a bridge under the road.