My very first year in Switzerland

I've always led a very eventful life. When I was 6 years old and living in Italy, my father got a job in Switzerland. He moved there three months ahead of the rest of us and settled in a small apartment. My brother and I had 3 months of french lessons before we started school in Granois, an invisible village way, way up in the mountains, with a population of about 500. My dad had found this really charming typical-swiss chalet, complete with geraniums on the balcony, but only comprising of 5 rooms: a master, an invisible room for my brother and I with bunk beds, a bathroom, kitchen and invisible living room.
My first day of school, I didn't speak a single word of French: those lessons only taught me things like lit (bed), chambre (room) and bonjour (hello). Since I wasn't looking for a hotel room, it made things a little difficult... On top of the language barrier, Granois was so small the school was actually old military barracks from the '40s, each with a working fire place and flagstone floors. We did not use paper notebooks, but instead all our homework was done on individual small chalkboards we would use in class and take home.
Winter of 1976 was one of the snowiest on record; so much snow, in fact, that my brother and I skied to school. Yes, you read that right, we would get up in the morning, put on our snowsuits, put our ski boots on, tie our skis on (back then, bindings were actually rubber bands) and ski down the mountain all the way to our school! My dad would come pick us up at the end of the day, load up all our gear and take us home. It was fantastic! Looking back, I was constantly expecting Maria from "the Sound of Music", to come strolling into my house, over the background of "the hills are alive..." blah,blah,blah.
I only attended the first grade in Granois, by the following year, my father had moved us down in the valley, to Sion.
....But that's another story.