It’s definitely been a while! Life has been crazy busy and I’ve literally had no time to blog, so sorry I’ve been so absent over the last few months. I’ve got so much to write about, but just haven’t had the chance to write about it yet. So, I’m hoping this year I’ll finally get round to telling all my travel tales, amongst other things!
I’m currently writing this from France, where I’m living in Morzine for the season. We moved out here in December and will be here till the end of April. Doing a ski season is something that has always been on my list, and we’re finally doing it! We’re working as chalet hosts in a beautiful chalet that sleeps 14.
Our jobs are pretty hectic – we are in at 7.15 to cook breakfast, prep for the evening, bake a cake for afternoon tea, clean and tidy the chalet and make up the rooms. After all this is finished, we’re then out for a few hours before heading back for evening service. This break totally depends on how many guests we have, if we have children, if anything’s gone wrong in the morning… if we’re lucky we’re out by 11am, though we did manage a few 10ams when we had a quieter chalet. If we’re not, we’re not out at all!
Canapes are served at 7pm (if there are kids, they eat before at 6), then we serve a 4 course dinner at 7.30pm. We usually arrive a couple hours before to clear away afternoon tea, prep some more and lay the table. I think our first service we were out by 11.30pm, but that’s now anywhere between 9.30pm and 10.30pm depending on the day/group! The days are long, the breaks are usually spent napping, but the days we get to ski make it all worth it!
Saturday’s are changeover days, so we literally work non-stop from 7am till 10pm, which are the worst. We strip all the beds, make them up for the new guests, drain and refill the hot tub and deep clean the chalet. This is in between breakfast service for the first guests then dinner service for the new guests. It’s a lot!
BUT. It’s not all work (though, it is the majority of the time). Despite the fact we’re also running our company, Isho Creative, from here – a nightmare with the slow wifi of the French Alps and our lack of time! We’re still having lots of fun – even if we’re exhausted ALL the time! We live with six other people who all do the same job as us, so it’s nice to have the same routine and all struggle with the same things too. We also all arrive home at the same time for a beer and a catch up each night! And of course, we ski!
The skiing was off to a weird start for me. I LOVE skiing but I’ve always struggled with my confidence – and anyone who skis will know this is a huge thing. You can have no technique and not really know what you’re doing but if you’ve got the confidence and you’re not scared of falling, you will (somehow) make it down that mountain. As soon as the fear kicks in and the loss of confidence is there, you freeze and the mountain somehow gets 10x steeper. It definitely took me a while to get my ski legs back – I’m used to lessons/ski school and skiing every day when I go on holiday, so skiing once or twice a week meant each time I felt like I’d forgotten what I was doing! As the seasons gone on we’ve managed to ski more and I’ve definitely improved and am doing WAY better than I was. I often go past runs I’ve had wobbles on before and I’m like really? I cried over something as flat as that?! But you get that, it’s crazy how much you can progress once you stop thinking about it all so much!
So that’s about it for now – working, skiing, sleeping is pretty much my life now. I’m planning on writing more posts on skiing, ski seasons & our job etc, so keep an eye out for those! I hope you’re all having a wonderful 2020 so far!
