While I spend my last two weeks in Pau excited to return home and increasingly heartbroken over leaving, I'm trying to enjoy every minute of my time here.
I went skiing with my host family in the Pyrénées on Saturday. Michèle, Charles and I drove an hour to their tiny apartment on the slopes on Friday night, then Philippe and Dénis (my host dad and other host brother) joined us Saturday morning. At dinner on Friday night, I found what might be my new favorite French food: raclette. This monster is a hunk of cheese that you melt under a heat lamp and spread over potatoes and various gourmet pork products. I think I may have gained about 10 kilos just from dinner, but I don't even care. If I ever see raclette on a restaurant menu again, I'm getting it.
Saturday was the first day of the ski season, so there were a ton of people on the mountain. There was also a lot of fresh powder, which I got to know quite well because I spent a lot of the day tumbling face-first into the snow. I haven't fallen at all the past 5 times I've been skiing in Colorado, but for some reason, I had a really hard time staying upright in the Pyrénées. Maybe I suck. Or maybe I can blame the snow, which is more humid and heavy in the Pyrénées than in Colorado. All members of my host family are excellent skiers, so I was taken on my first-ever rouge (rouge=black on Colorado trails=basically cliffs with moguls), and got well acquainted with useful French skiing vocabulary such as dérape (slide), chasse-neige (wedge), and virage exagéré (exaggerated turn).
Despite spending half the day on my face, I still had a great time. How amazing is it that I got to skiing on the other side of the world? The views of the mountains and towns below were incredible, and it was a sunny day without falling snow or rain. We stayed until about 5:00 in the afternoon, then headed home.
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