La Bresse

This past Friday I went on a night skiing trip with my students and some of the teachers from school.  Wow, what an experience!  I have been skiing for a pretty long time, and I am really not a bad skier.  I am to the point where I never fall and feel really comfortable with it.  Well, that all changed on Friday.  First of all I had to rent skis, boots and poles since I decided not to lug all my ski equipment over here with me.  I decided to go for the cheaper rentals, mistake #1.  When we got to the resort, called La Bresse, I went up the mountain first with the 2 ski instructors from school.  Mistake #2.  Of course they take us on the biggest, steepest slope there.  So ok, I'm fine, I'm confident, I can do this, right?  Well we start heading down the mountain, the ski instructors are around me doing like intricate jumps and skiing backwards.  Then there's me, trying to get used to these new skis and boots, and trying to stay calm about the fact that the entire hill was straight up ice. So after about 1 minute, I have my first wipe out.  We are talking both skis off, poles flying, wipe out.  No big deal, get up and start going again.  I start going and boom.. wipe out #2.  This continued at least 6 times on that first hill.  So once I get to the bottom, I realized that my boot had come unhooked during the first fall, which was the cause of the other 5 falls.  Ok so no big deal, one of the instructors helped me fix the problem and we went back up for another run.  Once I got used to my skis things started to go better!  Of course these guys come to this resort like once a week, so they decided to take me on the pitch black non existent trails going through the trees!  I seriously thought I was going to die.  But since I am here to tell the story, looking back it was pretty fun.  Now, next challenge, the "tire fesse."  This means a "butt pull."  Sounds easy, right?  You have to sit your butt on this little round thing and it pulls you up the hill.  Ok this would be easy for someone who has done this forever, but for me it was a different story.  I wiped out at least 3 times trying to get on this thing.  French people think I am crazy.  Anyways, by the end of the night I had finally accustomed myself to this new French skiing experience, and it ended up being really fun!  I also learned some new french vocabulary, which is how to say "bruises."  I have so many of them I can barely sit down.