Raquiflette and Vin Chaud (again!)

Bonjour tout le monde!
So as you may or may not have heard, I had a bit of an eventful week where I spent the night in hospital due to an allergic reaction to my antibiotics. I am fine now and no harm done so no worries! No details here as I am sick of talking about being sick! And anyway, no fun to read such things.

Instead I shall tell you about the lovely weekend I had here, my last weekend here for a couple weeks as next weekend I'll be in Geneva, then the program is taking us to  Lyon, and then it is our February break (more on that to come). Saturday I ended up meeting some other students down town and we checked out this museum, the Musee de l'ancien Eveche, which is in the old bishop's house and is mainly an archaeology museum.There was however an exhibit on this photographer who took lots of photographs of the area from the 30s to the 80s. Lots of Alps and skiiers and such, very lovely. Also in the basement you can explore some of the Roman foundations and see the remains of a really early church, ,which I enjoyed. We all went to a little bar for some drinks before dinner and I had a nice glass of (legal! hasn't gotten old yet) wine, then got Italian for dinner.

Sunday was a much anticipated day as it was our first trip with the program! We went snowshoing up to a chalet for dinner then sledded back down in the dark. The snowshoing was fun, but a bit tiring especially going up hill. When you snowshoe you have these clunky extra weights on your feet plus you have to lift your leg up extra to take a step. it was quite cold as well, high up as we were, but very beautiful and white--huge expanses of snow lined with trees and distant lights of the village.

As you can see, very snowy! There was probably two feet of snow, though of course we were walking on top of it. It started getting dark as we approached the chalet. Once there, they fed us DELICIOUS vin chaud, probably the best I've had so far. The lady told us it had cinammon and orange and "other spices". For dinner there was this traditional dish of tartiflette which has potato and cream and cheese and lardons, which are kind of like bacon, and for dessert this DELICIOUS red berry crumble with ice cream. We were VERY full. We got to sled part of the way back, alternating between snowshoing and sledding down. It was very beautiful and dark, lit with our cute little head lamps, and very quiet and isolated feeling. By the end we were all exhausted and sore and cold but it was well worth it--lots of fun! Definitely a unique experience.

Til next time!

Love,
Miriam