Well, another trip to the Alps is unfortunately over, but what an experience it was.  This time I was working as a rep. at half term for a school group from Bournemouth.  It was the usual setup of coach across, ski for 6 days and coach back, but I had an awesome time.  The group consisted of 36 11-16 year-olds, 5 teachers, 2 drivers and myself which was a nice manageable number.  With a planned outward trip of 25 hours, I got the feeling it was going to be an eventful week when it eventually took 37 hours to get there:

 

- delays in heavy snow in France

- delays in heavy snow in Germany

- breakdown at a service station in Germany for about 4 hours

- delays in heavy snow in Austria

- a hair-raising ride up the snow-laden valley to resort with Gerry "The Legend" (driver) exceeding all expectations of how far we could get without snow chains

 

The whole group were absolutely amazing without a single complaint about the journey or anyone asking when we were going to get there ... I'm just glad the teachers had taken along a massive stack of DVDs and that we manged to fix the DVD player.

 

My group was staying at a youth hostel attached to a fancy hotel in the resort, along with 2 other school groups which were also repped by colleagues from "Sloping Off".  The 3 reps stayed in an appartment just down the road and got on amazingly ... I'm just glad Jonny didn't take offence at being the butt of most of the abuse during the week - SCHWULE POWER! (he's only young, he'll get over it).  The photos I've uploaded in the photo section say it all ...

 

Throughout the week the kids had 2 ski lessons each day and all seemed to love it, even those who had the odd trip to the hospital for X-rays and a bit of patching up (thankfully only 2 hurt themselves and neither were too serious).  The evenings were entertaining as well with quizzes, skittles, pizza, a race night, table-tennis, ski race, presentations, a disco and the odd beer or two.

 

The skiing was amazing with huge amounts of snow falling before we got there and again at the start of the week.  We were even treated to a whole day of sunshine mid-week so made the most of it with lunch outside a great Ski-Alm in the next resort over from Zauchensee.  The off-piste was by far the best I've ever done and helped by the fact I kept (stupidly) following fellow rep Simon (a ski instructor) through the trees.  Was I scared?  Most of the time!

 

The journey back was much less eventful than the outbound one and we arrived at the port with plenty of time to spare so had a bit of a look around Ouistram.  I'm now starting to try and get my head around the fact that as of Monday I'll be back in a "proper" job and will have to wear a suit and things.  That said, I'm hoping they'll have me back next year for half term so we'll wait and see .....