27 April, 2023

BSKL Ski Trip 2023

The BSKL students had a fantastic time and were incredibly well behaved throughout the whole trip. The first of the many more ski trips since the pandemic.

The BSKL students had a fantastic time and were incredibly well behaved throughout the whole trip. All of them made great progress on the slopes, all groups making it up the mountain on the second day. This was for sure a memorable trip for them all and they should feel very thankful and lucky to have had such a great opportunity. Thank you to the parents who allowed them to go on the trip and trusted us to take care of them. A huge thanks to Les Elfes who provided our students with this fabulous opportunity, took care of them and challenged them throughout the whole week. Finally, a thank you from me to the students and also to our two chaperons, Mr. Gothard and Dr.Brown who gave up their Easter holidays to help on this trip. What better way to learn about the trip than hearing it from student's perspective.

Mr Joseph O'Connor

Friday/Saturday – Travel Day

Written by: Sebastian

On the first day I was feeling tired and nervous whilst at the same time excited. This was because I was about to disappear to the other side of the planet for a week. After the first flight and arriving in Dubai I felt nervous and yet still engulfed in a sense of indescribable wonder at the grand scale of what had just happened and was about to happen. As the first flight started, I watched movies to pass the time. When I arrived in Switzerland, I felt very tired from the previous two flights. As we got to the car, I felt exhausted and when we came to Les Elfes, we all wanted to go to sleep. We all prepared for the next day by fitting our ski things.

Afternoon Activity: Ski Fitting

Evening Activity: Movie/Games Night

Sunday – 1st day skiing

Written by: Luca

On the second day I felt tired from the 20+ hours of traveling the previous day. I woke up at 5:30 from jetlag, my roommates and I waited until 7:30 for breakfast, breakfast went fast, and it ended at 7:45. Skiing started at 9:15 so we had time to wait. During that time, we got ready for the activities, and we soon left for the slopes. It was very foggy and hard to see during the day, and when the day finished my feet and legs were very sore. The town walk felt good while a bit restricted. The torch walk was not particularly special to me but after we ate dinner and went to sleep. Overall, the day was tiring from the previous day, and nice from the skiing.

Afternoon Activity: Town Walk

Evening Activity: Night Torch Walk

Monday – 2nd day skiing

Written by: Tia

This was the third day of our ski trip and being away from home, and I remember waking up that morning by Gina as usual but I strangely felt extremely sore, and I brushed it off as being sore from skiing the day before, but later at breakfast I found out that Gina hit me in the head while I was sleeping. I did not know what to feel about it, but I put on some muscle cream and went on with the day. The day went on as usual and we grabbed our skis, but unlike the prior day, Patrick – our instructor – did not give us our ski passes before we got onto the bus. We, oh so naïve, figured he would give it to us later. Once we arrived at the gondolas, Patrick went through the gate leaving Emma, Thor, Isaac, Rhu Sen, and I quite confused. We found out later that he had forgotten to bring our ski passes. He said he placed them in a different jacket (all Les Elfes instructors have several copies of the same yellow jacket.) The rest of the day was pretty much a blur, I learned how to play pool, but I think that the best part of the day was when the terrain on the speed track was nice enough to carve and go parallel down without stopping at all, as well as the jump track, where I left my soul on the very last jump.

Afternoon Activity: Team Selfie Challenge

Evening Activity: Movie and Games Room

Tuesday – 3rd day skiing

Written by: Emma

The third day of skiing was pretty relaxing. Our coach, Patrick, didn’t forget our ski passes this time thankfully. While skiing, we saw the other groups. We wanted to flex at the other groups to show off as a joke. We tried finding the other groups, but they kept changing their routes making it even harder to find them. We did find some groups struggling to turn and they were slow, so we zoomed past them making it funny. During the afternoon activity, we baked. I chose to make pizza rolls. The first roll was a braided pizza. One of the staff members then gave us another piece of dough and I tried making a dough among us filled with tomatoes sauce. That did not work in the end, so I gave up. Tia made a cat dumpling pizza filled with tomatoes sauce. Hers succeed. We had dinner and immediately went to the sport center. Nikkita tied my hands and basically attempted to kidnap me. SHE FAILED. I ESCAPED.

Afternoon Activity: Baking

Evening Activity:Sports Centre

Wednesday – Snow trekking/shoeing day

Written by: Zi Hao

The fifth day of the ski trip was quite unusual. First, we were woken up at 8:30 instead of the usual 70 but I woke up at around 7:45 and was just bored out of my mind until 8:30 came. Today was also not a skiing day and instead we’re going to go take pictures of the mountains and hike for the afternoon. We met at the ski racks at about 9:30, for the pictures we went onto a very tall mountain and the view was breathtaking. There are snow peaked mountains all around us and I took a ton of pictures, soon enough people started to throw snowballs at each other and but thankfully I put my phone in my pocket before I got hit (Mason is not so lucky, his phone was hit by Isaac). After lunch we took our snowshoes which are basically addons for our shoes to help us walk in the snow. We went back onto the mountain and started to hike down with the snowshoes, the view is also very nice, and I was able to see Mt Blanc and the border with France along with several towns. However, the walk was the most tiring thing I experienced in the trip, my lower leg was close to just giving up when I was just about halfway but some how I managed to make it through the entire hike without collapsing. While we were hiking, I also saw some paragliders gliding along the mountains which made the view more fantastic but did not lessen my tiredness. When the hike was finished all of us went back to Les Elfes, I was just so tired by then that I didn’t want to even talk. Now I am just waiting to go into town and typing this write up.

Afternoon Activity:Shopping/Swimming

Evening Activity: The BIG quiz

Thursday – 4th day skiing

Written by: Gini

The sixth day was quite a fun one as we managed to ski much faster than we usually did. This was the day after walking up a mountain. Our ski instructor brought us to the red slope; it turns out the ending was a black slope, and we were shocked that we managed to ski it. After we skied the slope, we went to do a race. However, we forgot to time it, so my ski instructor set up another course and I managed to get third, Daniel got second and Gina got first. After that, we went to lunch and ate nachos, salad, and sausages. After lunch, we went to a café and had some hot chocolate, also managing to ski some more slopes after. By the end of the skiing session, all of us had the choice to go rock climbing or play board games, I chose board games and did a treasure hunt outside made by the animation team. Once everyone got back from rock climbing, we had dinner, fondue, chicken and mashed potatoes. We played the cube, a game show, shortly after dinner. It was very fun, and everyone participated in this activity. After the cube, we were all really tired from the day's activities and went to bed.

Afternoon Activity: Rock Climbing

Evening Activity: The Cube

Friday – 5th day skiing (race day)

Written by: Gisselle

The last day of the ski trip was my favourite mostly because our instructor brought us to ski down the entire mountain and it felt really cool. I felt like I improved a lot during this trip because our instructor was really nice and helpful throughout the entire trip. She even let us drink hot chocolate before lunch. Lunch was always really yummy and it was fun to talk with the members of my group. I felt like I made a lot of new friends with people I don’t think I would have been friends with otherwise. When we got back from skiing, we had a prize giving ceremony and they showed a bunch of pictures that we took during the selfie challenge, and it was really funny. Overall, I think it was a really good experience and I enjoyed the trip a lot.