USA today

There are 2 very important, most busy weeks in USA hospitality…i.e Christmas…and SKI-week! Now you have to get a grip of what Ski –week is…ski week is a week where children have a week off school so that they can go ski..how cool is that…that’s like Cape-Tonians having a beach week….?? Anyway its good for business. Ski-week came up right after Valentines (the Sunday ) and presidents day (the Monday).

Many guest in the hotel celebrated Valentines earlier in the week and we had the odd couple here and there, during the week..chances are they were married…but not to each other…

During this week we were told to UPSELL upsell UPSELL…because it’s the celebration of love day…its all about LovE, Lust, Temptation and BUBBLY…in the words of our FRENCH (most romantic nationality apparently) ‘you will buy your mistress a bottle of Dom Perignon…but definitely not for your wife..’

That was the start of this crazy week where the restaurant did 200 covers MINIMUM every night…

During the days the patio is opened as the hints of spring creep into the mountains, trust all patio staff to be South Africans as we bask in the sun to try get those rays our skins yearn for, as the all too cool servers strut their stuff in their sunglasses and guests sit by open fires, under gas-burners, listening to live music, right on the slopes….THIS…is the life…

SO time is running out for us South African folks here and they know things are gonna be a lot different once we are gone… they wonder who they gonna ship in for the next season…the guys are hoping Brazilian ladies….because they work hard….? :D

Every Tuesday is a big night in downtown Truckee (when I say ‘downtown’ I make the place sound big…but im trying to make it sound cool) its kinda like a Thursday back home and in one street they have 3 bars..the local hang out.. So this Tuesday we had YET another loooong night and we decided to go down town but being past 00:00 we search for a drink around the house, all Americans here keep drinks outside because it’s a large scale FREEZER…and we found a bunch of beers in the cooler….frozen together in an ice-block…3 girls all dressed up we throw the ice-block out the cooler….get a screwdriver and like the caveman AFRICAN that I am we start snow picking and carving the beers out of the ice block stabbing a few and getting beer all over ourselves!! After the hardwork we threw hot water over the ice….and by this time…the taxi was there to fetch us:D

Ski week is almost done!! and this means I can once again put my ski-feet back on the mountain!!! No more amateurs on the mountain, us advanced people can get back up there and just glide onto the chairlifts!! I stayed off for their SAFETY..?

Random thoughts…


7 week s left in the USA…
up to date I have been confused for,
an Australian…NUMEROUS times, every night 4 times a night, a pommie (british) , Dutch / Netherlands, Irish ad I speak Gibberish…

People that have heard about me think I am black.

• My American identity is Isle Mar-tiez
• Nicknames I picked up include ‘illy-vanilly’ and L-Z [el-zee]
• My French manger still can’t say my name and I respond to anything with an ‘l’ or a ’z’ that starts we an ‘eeee’ sound.
• The Italian manager calls me ELSA
• I look and sound like Minnie Driver

As a South African…

We don’t wear shoes back home, we are all black, we have lions and TIGERS…a lady asked me what I recommend because she wants to go on a Safari and come back ALIVE…???

When they find out I’m from South Africa some responses included…

ooo I’ve been to Ethiopia…ooo I went to Kilimanjaro…WE have friends in Australia…my nephew is in Cape town, his name is Alec and looks like Ashton KUtcher…so you must look out for him when you’re back…

The next conversation was with a guy maybe a year younger than myself…

Boy: Where is South Africa…?


The southern tip of Africa…


Boy: Yeah where’s Africa…?


Do you know wheres Europe…?


Boy: Uuuu….


wait..do you know wheres Australia??


Boy: …So I been to Japan before but I have no idea where that is on a map….


Ok dude…honestly I cant help you, pick up a map….!!!


Many people we speak to are not aware of the violence or crime that WE think is over publicized, but are scared of the WILd..they are scared of the animals…my favourite line..a CAT??i would LOVE to have a normal small domesticated cat, the lion is SUCH hard work!!! And my wild dog eats me out of the house!!

Words or 'sounds' heard out of Americans’ mouths include…LEKKER, suip, lekker suip, is jy lief vir my, baie mooi meisie, yebo… the words heard from some of the ‘gentleman’ will not be written here…

But all that said everyone is very excited about the world cup being there!!


And on that note…7 weeks left…

time flies when you’re in a different time zone…