European Cooperation

Today is an unexpected day of rest. I was supposed to be continuing with my "shadowing" of french instructors in order to learn more about the wonderful methods of french teaching, but it appears our activites have not gone unnoticed....

The ESF, the guardian of the high quality of french snowsport instruction, have been taking a keen interest in our shadowing.

It appears that tere are numerous rules governing the teaching of skiing/riding in france. These are all hangovers from the glory days of french ski instruction where the primary skill a potential instructor had to demonstrate was french nationality (the ability to put kids off skiing for life and make grown men cry were merely skils that were thought useful).

Anyway the ESF have complained that the ski schools were are shadowing are employing unqualified and, more seriously, english instructors.

The basis of this accusation is we are seen hanging around the back of children's classes picking up fallen children, rounding up strays and generally looking after them whilst the instructor(s) piss off and have a good time.

Possibly the ESF were merely confused and thought we were a pedophile ring as the concept of assisting young children seem alien to them.

Anyone cynical would say that ESF are unhappy that brit instrucors working for private ski schools are starting to poach customers as word spreads that it is that their instructors have not learnt their teaching methods from "Full Metal Jacket".

Anyway the long and the short is that the police were called in (I said this was serious) and the frightners applied to the ski schools involved. The end result is everyone is to scared to let us shadow them. This obviously makes it exceedingly difficult for us to get our required hours of shadowing in. At the moment we are talking with BASI about a wavier.

The other effect is that we are at a loose end as all the instructors are booked to help in the half term rush so there are no instructors.

Just to add insult to injury our food allowance has been cut to a truly crap breakfast (it can only be described as a "continental" breakfast due to the fact it is served on the continet, everyone else would describe it as cereal, bread and jam) and a single course in the evening (last night was rice and unspecified meat in a gerkin sauce - gerkin sauce for christ's sake! who the fluck thought that one up?)

The reasons given for this are that Base Camp Group have cut the ammount of money paid for our meals. WTF? Needless to say there is some restlessness in the ranks.

And yes, I don't think much of the ESF