Torch vs. Flashlight

Chamonix a year later is just like I remembered it. The smell is what I missed the most. The fresh French mountain air. It has a special smell to it. The smell is difficult to describe. The smell has the initial impact of making one feel alive. There is nothing like it.

Today, towards the end of our training today, we started discussing the role that our night porter plays in the entire experiment. This discussion ultimately led to a fire box, which apparently in the UK, houses a whistle, a reflective jacket, contact numbers and most importantly a torch. This box is supposed to be the first thing that the night porter should grab in the event that there is a fire in the hotel or chalet. As they were going through and explaining the importance that the fire box plays, they kept referring to the torch and how it should be pulled out automatically and used if needed. Well in my dumb feeble mind I kept wondering why the hell one would want to use a torch to start another fire if one is already in the process of trying to put out the original fire. Dumb Brits I figured. Well, come to find out, I was the dumb American. Apparently a "torch" is actually what the Brits call a "flashlight." You can play out the scene in your mind of what occurred when the dumb American raised this intelligent question. Blah!

After training today I felt a bit drained. It may have partly been due to the fact that it is Thanksgiving and I was a bit homesick or because i realized that I was going to have to be responisible for the chalet. Who knows. I took off after training and got a bar of chocolate and walked around the city. I ran into another manager who turned out to be Italian. We spoke for a bit and quickly realized that her parents live on the street next to the one that I lived on when I was in Rome. After exchanging stories about each other in French, English, Italian, and German I sat back and realized why I was there. This whole experience is exactly what I have been looking for.

All of the hotel managers have been here for a week and a half and myself and the other two Front House Supervisors were just thrown into the mix yesterday. So far it has been quite a ride. As soon as I arrived yesterday afternoon, I was automatically greeted by everyone and welcomed by the team. 99.7% of people are Brits and Scotts with a couple exceptions; me, Marta the Italian, and Melanie the German girl. Everyone is truly great and I am pretty confident that I will get along with everyone until Sunday, when we all depart for our resorts. Its pretty refreshing to see that we are all here for the same reason and that is to board/ski.

I still have absolutely no clue as to what I will be doing for the next 5 months. The only item that I have gathered over the day of training today is that I unfortunately have an important role. I have tried to pass on my role to the dishwasher but he wouldn't have it. For some reason the chalet that I will be working in is the largest one that our company runs. Somehow they are under the impression that this chalet can be run with only 3 managers and for some reason they think that my non-existent hotel experience will assist in making this possible. They must not have understood during my interview, due to my thick American accent, when I stated that I was interested in skiing hard, not working hard. I plan on delegating anything and everything to my staff. They will all be given my non existent mobile number and they will be instructed to call me in case anything happens but not if the place is on fire because I wont know what to do with the torch.

PS. Evidently I will be driving a convoy of some of us to Les Arcs and Courchevel. I failed to tell them that I am an aggressive driver and cant read a map to save my life.