Annecy Day Out

Sophies end of year work-do was a trip to Annecy in France. It is 35km from Geneva and the trip from Tignes is a two and a half hour drive. It is a beautiful town situated around a huge lake with snow capped mountain ranges. It also has an old village in the middle of the town perfect for exploring. We were lucky enough to have wonderful warm weather and lots of yummy treats!

Snowbabies has been such an amazing company to work for. Donna, the owner and creator, has helped Simon and I with so much during our time in Tignes. I was very lucky to be able to work for her. 
So, for our end of season celebrations, the team (7 of us still in resort) headed out of Tignes for the day. We had a picnic beside the lake, explored the town, ate ice creams and loved every minute. 


Here are some pretty photos of Annecy and our great Snowbabies day out!

French Cat with its whiskers chopped!

Playing Outside

In April you would expect the snow to be mostly melted as it was last year.  Pool parties were meant to be cranking and barbecues in the sun were supposed to be a daily event, however, this year was different.  

After a super warm few weeks in March the temperature dropped and we got a heap of fresh powder so we decided to hit a few jumps out the back of our place. Here are some photos of what went down:

Update on Life

So after a lot of deliberation we have decided what we want to do after our snow season in France!  There were so many options including staying in France for the summer, traveling to Spain as well as moving to London or Hong Kong.  We crossed Spain and France off the list as we were uncertain about getting jobs as most of the seasonaire work is taken up by English companies that require you to have a UK passport or visa, which we don't have.  We also figured that it would be best to come back and live in the UK and holiday in Europe rather than getting paid minimum wage to do crappy work with lots of hours.

So the toss up was between London and Hong Kong and we decided to go with the later.  If we moved to  London Simon would have had to use up his 5 year ancestory visa and we wouldn't be able to work in Hong Kong due to being too old!  So Hong Kong it is... Sophie can give teaching a go and Simon will hopefully find a sweet engineering job or teach English with Sophie.

Living in HK will give us the ability to travel around asia and  experience a culture that is far different from back home.  After HK, who knows?  But we would like to travel through America before getting too settled down.  Hopefully we can pick up a sweet van and drive around doing all the Man vs Food challenges/ just eating at the biggest American pig out spots as well as visiting all the big name cities and go snowboarding at the American and Canadian slopes... Going to cost a bit so hopefully we can save in HK, buy some sweet toys and live somewhere awesome!

Our future home/city

X Games!

The X Games were soo good.  Had heaps of athletes from all over the world (including NZ) stomping some insane tricks.  The two main events were the Slopestyle and Superpipe.

Slopestyle involves the competitors completing tricks down a course compromising of jumps (up to 75ft) and other features which they can jib (such as boxes and rails).  The size of the jumps were insane and the athletes were dominating them.  You have to see it in real life to properly appreciate it though.  TV just doesn't do it justice.

Snowball Battle!

 

Superpipe is the event where the competitors perform tricks in a half pipe with walls that are 22 feet high (7 meters).  This event was dominated by Shaun White who is clearly a cut above the rest.  The height he can get out of the top of the pipe is incredible.  The Superpipe finals saw a lot more people turn out than was expected and after sneaking past the security guards as they dealt with the surges of the crowd we were confronted with a gate that we had to jump to finally get a view of the pipe.  Here are some photos we got...

Shaun White - Clearly higher than the other competitors!

We were lucky to have Beka and Dylan come and stay with us as well for the X Games week.  They came at the right time as it was warm enough to snowboard with just hoodies on as well as getting to see some of the best snowboarders and skiers in the world!