Life in progress: "C'est chaud comme sport!"

So the strike was most definitely not as epic as they made it out to be. Transportation was running fine. Classes were cancelled though. Some of the other Americans went out and watched the protests ("manifestations"). My friend Cameron in Le Mans went out too. I, as usual, stayed in and did mildly productive things. Mildly.

At 7 I went out to dinner with Juli, Victoria, Elizabeth and Jill. We wound up at a place called Nuits Indiennes (Indian Nights). I had agneau (lamb) tikka masala, which was really good. From there we went to a bar/pub called Charly's and played darts. We were killing time before we met the rest of the Americans; everyone but Juli and me was going to a club called L'Opéra around midnight. From Charly's we went to O'Pouge's and eventually saw everyone. Whee.

Friday was nothing special, except that I didn't fall asleep til after, which was made of fail since I was getting up at 6. Why did I get up at 6am on a Saturday? Pour faire du surf.

Yeah. I went snowboarding in the Alps.

Shuttle buses run from Chambéry to a couple mountains. We went to La Féclaz. Got there around 9ish and hit the slopes at probably 10:20? Juli and Veronica waited for their ski lesson at noon, and I went up with Courtney, who's good at boarding, Sarah and Jill, who are both good skiers, and Victoria, who was going boarding but had never been before. I rode up with Courtney and Sarah; the view was breathtaking, until I gracefully tumbled off the chair at the very end and took Courtney with me. After much difficultly the five of us started off, Victoria and I falling every ten feet or so. It was rough even on the green trail. D: I got the hang of it eventually and took off down a hill. Eventually I only fell every kilometer or so. I was getting really excited when we reached the end and I was looking forward to going down again and being super awesome. All of the trails converged at the one exit and of course it was there that I lost control. I managed to turn around so that I was going backwards. I very gracefully lost my balance and fell back, landing hard on my wrist. I wound up having to take off my board and walk the rest of the way because I couldn't put any weight on my wrist to get back on my feet.

I hung out on the mountain for two hours while waiting for the bus back. Got a crepe and realized roblochon cheese is super nasty. Went to the hospital here in Chambéry (lucky!) since there was no doctor on the mountain. It took half an hour to check in, two and a half to wait, and then less than an hour for them to take x-rays, give me a brace and some prescriptions, and tell me the ligaments and tendons were a little torn. Whee, so my first trip snowboarding since I was 9, and I sprain my wrist. I was disappointed because I'd wanted to keep doing it all day, and because we're suposed to be going to the Championnats du monde de ski alpin (Alpine World Ski Championships) on Friday and then I think we were going to whatever we wanted on Saturday and Sunday. So I get to do nothing, yay.

Either way though, I can say I went snowboarding in the Alps. Oh yeah. =D Muscles I didn't know I had are sore now and my butt is ninetenn shades of bruised, but I totally went snowboarding.