SiTel Ski Weekend: March 8-10

The French Alps

For the past 5 months, everyone in the company have been eagerly awaiting this much-anticipated event: The SiTel Ski Weekend. The board saw it fit to "treat" us employees, including families (or friends, hehehe...) to a nice and relaxing winter holiday after all the hard work we have put in trying to make it a good year for the company in '07.

Arrangements started early in October, considering that this involved organizing not only a big but also international group, our coordinators and the travel agency were anticipating the activity to be quite a logistic nightmare. We're glad they have made all the preparations ahead of time. All we had to do was count the days...

D-Day (minus 1): Since SiTel has offices in Greece, USA, Japan, Hongkong and Singapore, our international colleagues and their families had to fly in to The Netherlands a day before. In the case of our "kababayan" RE who's based in Singapore, his wife and two kids flew in all the way from Baguio City :-) Their hotel accommodations were booked near the Eindhoven Airport, which is where we will all be departing from the next day.

D-Day: From the office in Den Bosch, 3 limo buses took us to Eindhoven Airport, where 2 company-chartered Boeing 737 planes were waiting. The planes jetted us to Grenoble, France in about 45 minutes. From Grenoble, it was another 1.5-hour bus ride to the ski resort of Saint Sorlin d' Arves.

The best part of the bus ride: the last 30 minutes or so, where we went higher and higher up the Alps along the amazingly scenic, albeit treacherously curvy mountain highway.

Eindhoven Airport
*Since we were a group of more than 400, dedicated check-in counters were set-up for us.

Transavia planes

We fly SiTel airlines, hehehe...

A bus ride away from the Alps!




the long and winding road... (are we there yet?)



not yet...


...almost there!

Saint Sorlin d' Arves

Snow-capped mountains provide a magnificent backdrop.

This sunny charming village resort of Saint Sorlin is situated at the foot of Col de la Croix de Fer, in the French Alps.

It offers 120km of marked trails, 14 ski lifts, 7 chair lifts, 29 trails based on the steepness/slope: 4 green, 11 blue, 11 red, and 3 black (for the true daredevils!)

The ski resort also offers plenty of possibilities for walking, cross country skiing and other fun activities in the snow.

We reached the resort at around 3pm and before checking in to our chalets we dropped by the ski shop at the town to pick up our gears (the company already paid for our ski equipment rental :-)

At the Ski Shop, the blue "SiTel" bonnets are our V.I.P. passes :)

SiTel booked Chalets L' Oree des Pistes and Les Fermes de Saint Sorlin for this event. The apartments are newly built and also equipped with a balcony or terrace, a kitchen and a living area with TV. Wait, a TV? Who needs one in this place? There's just so much to see and do!

view from the terrace

Activities

There were ski lessons for everyone: beginners (further narrowed down to "ultimate beginners": first time to see snow) and advanced. We decided not to join the lessons that very afternoon upon arrival, and opted to just enjoy the scenery first and also socialize with colleagues who came from different parts of the globe. After all, there is still tomorrow...

Hence more pictures at next post ;-)

Enthusiastic skiers: SiTel kids already taking ski lessons as soon as we arrived!

"Pektyur pektyur!!!"

"Hmm, ma sakay ko guro sa ski lift ay Kaso pabalik sa chalet, ma-ski lang padalum.
Pwede tani kung indi lang ko kapoy sa byahe. Hehehe!"




Saint Sorlin d' Arves