Update from the Alps

It's been a while since our last blog update as we've been pretty busy getting into the swing of our new lives in the Alps. We are now into our third week of our jobs as a chalet couple and after a busy few weeks are starting to get the hang of cooking for 16 people 6 nights a week and figuring out how much gear to wear for -12 degrees!

Luckily things have improved dramatically from our first practice night of cooking in our chalet (no guests – just a rent-a-crowd luckily) where we took 6 hours trying to figure out how to turn on the oven and stove (we felt a little better when even our boss couldn't figure it out!), smoked out the chalet with the fire, put wine that was off in our main course sauce a minute before serving it and then to top the night off, our crème brulees didn't set (due to the late start), forcing us to serve up runny vanilla custard with toffee on top!

Fortunately the cooking has gone pretty smoothly ever since and we've been very lucky to have had two great sets of guests so far. Even on Christmas when it was really tough to be so far away from all our family, friends and church working most of the day, our guests were really cool and bought us both Christmas pressies and made us feel part of the family for the week.

While we've been missing everyone we've still managed to have a pretty awesome time so far. Our typical day here involves leaving our apartment at a 7.45 for the freezing 5 min uphill walk to the Chalet as the sun rises. Breakie at 8.15 and then we do general prep for dinner, tidy the chalet and cook cakes for afternoon tea. This gives us between around 11.30 and 5.30 free for hitting the slopes, catching up with friends or just having an afternoon siesta (which has been a common occurance as our office bodies aren't used to all this physical work!). In the evenings we get the chalet fire going, talk to the guests, clean up the multitude of tea bags (saying english like their tea is a major understatement!) and cook a 3 course dinner. After washing up we tend to get out around 10.30 and if we have the energy we head up to our local bar “the Flying Squirrel” before hitting the sack. Hopefully we will be able to refine the process to trim off a few more hours for skiing/relaxing/sleeping!

We've managed to make a few friends while we've been here. The company we are working for has 3 chalets in total and we spend a fair bit of time with the other two couples who run the other chalets – Nick & Jules from the UK and Dom & Clare from New Zealand. We've shared plenty of laughs swapping funny cooking and guest stories and reminiscing over our daily stacks on the ski slopes! Have also met a few french and english locals and there is a general good community vibe around here.

The larger resort itself is fantastic with so many runs we've only been able to scrape the surface after 3 weeks. The snow has been great so far with last weekend producing almost a metre of snow, fingers crossed it keeps falling!

Our studio apartment is pretty cool – modern, comfy, under-floor heating and a loft with spare beds! We are sleeping on a fold out couch but it's a pretty good one! The best feature is it's only 5 mins walk from the lift and our chalet and you can ski right to our back door. Although at times we do miss the 100m walk to take a dip in the ocean at home!

Looking forward to our upcoming visitors during the season – next being Jen and Fort who have taken up the last minute out-the-door offer in our chalet for next week!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year – we are thinking of you all and if you get a chance, shoot us and email and tell us what you've been up to.



Restaurant with a view on the slopes of Les Arcs

Gav with Dom (from other chalet) on the chairlift

View from a chairlift - snow is pretty good!