Day 3 of skiing lessons this morning.

Calvin's Level 1 group did lots of drills - sliding forwards and backwards, turns and balancing, and changing directions. The conditions up the top were perfect this morning - powdery soft white snow on nice big runs.

Kate, Jeroen and Rianne were in the beginners group with their teacher, Rudolph. Kate found it difficult to keep up with the class as Rudolph moved on very quickly from skill to skill without really giving time to practice and it wasn't very good for Kate's confidence. So for the last 30 minutes, Kate transferred into Christophe's 'slow' beginners group. Christophe was a much nicer, patient and more positive teacher and he always had a happy face. Kate especially liked it when he gave the group a push from behind on the flat parts of the runs so she didn't have to use her poles!

At the end of class, Rianne decided she too would switch classes and go into Christophe's group. Popular guy!

After a lunch at the Dutch run pub 'Vie' just a few metres down from our chalet (we had croquettes!), Rianne and Kate practiced their turns on the gentle slope outside the chalet. There weren't any j-bars or ropes to bring them up the slope so they had to walk up each time they skied down.

Meanwhile, Jeroen and Calvin went up to an altitude of 3200 m (the resort is 1650 m high) on the gondolas. You take 2 gondolas and at the top you can see the peak of Mont Blanc. They did some blue runs down to the first gondola. They thought they almost started a red run (the poles looked red) and were about to trudge back up the slope a little until a really nice lady working at the resort (as a piste rescuer) came along and told us it was an orange run which means it's a freestyle run and it was easy enough to do and even went along for the ride! This brought them to the gondola to take them back down to the resort.

For dinner, Kate and Calvin made beef stroganoff with slightly strange looking packet microwave potatoes.