5th day of skiing lessons. Rianne was feeling a little bit sick and exhausted this morning so she decided to give skiing a miss. Calvin, Kate and Jeroen were pretty excited to go skiing this morning after yesterday's progress. Instead of everyone carrying their skis and walking up the hill, Jeroen and Calvin decided to ski down to the chairlift, catch it up to a run and ski down towards the school - and instead of Kate carrying her skis, Calvin skied them down for her. There was no Australia flag to wear on the slopes today but Calvin drew one in the snow with his ski pole. Kate really enjoyed skiing today. Christophe was an excellent teacher and was always happy. In fact, one of the other girls in the group commented to Kate, "Oh my gosh, he is still smiling. Why is he always smiling?" Kate thought Christophe was the best ski teacher - patient and very encouraging, even when Kate fell and slid down the scary slope at one stage! Jeroen was having the time of his life - a tall Dutch man in his element on the slopes. He was impressing his teacher, Rodolphe, with his skills and topped his class (there was only one other person in his class by this stage). Rodolphe was indeed impressed as Jeroen had only been skiing for 5 days and was managing difficult blue slopes. Calvin's group ended up on the other side of the resort in Vallée Blanche where they learned to carve the slopes on a nice fun blue run. They went off-piste a little bit which was great - fresh powdery snow! At the end, when Calvin took his skis off, one went sliding away from him down the icy slope and it was a frantic scramble trying to use his pole to catch it as it went halfway across the road! The French guy in the group thought it was the funniest sight and couldn't stop laughing! Meanwhile, Rianne went for a walk around the town. She thought she was safe from falling over as she wasn't skiing today. But, when she was walking down a slope, she slipped on some ice and fell pretty ******* her hip - badly bruised but no breaks! She did complete her mission though and got us croissants for lunch! After lunch, we all actually took a break from skiing. We decided to go up to the glacier on the gondola to see the views however the weather was pretty foul - 35 km winds blowing the snow up and the wind stingingly cold. We could only go so far up to the first gondola station as walkers couldn't go further up due to the wind. After about 10 seconds at the top (and taking a couple of very quick obligatory photos) we headed back down the gondola and met Jeroen and Rianne in Le Sherpa (another Dutch pub) for a hot drink. They had tried to go up about half an hour before us and also came back down straight away. Back at the chalet, Kate decided to practice a little bit of skiing on the slope nearby. She was trying to master parallel turns and Calvin got his exercise by pushing her up the hill so she could practice again and again. For dinner, we headed off to TriBeCa, a restaurant nearby, for a really good feed and some dessert. Calvin and Jeroen tried the "traditional" hot pots while Rianne got a French feast platter and Kate had lasagne.