boris

29/1/15

If you didn't gather by how excited I got when I named the linen cupboard after myself,  everything at the Chalet has a name.  Boris, as I am sure you are all wondering, is the snow plow of the Chalet. At morning meeting we were told that there would be an opportunity to learn to drive Boris that afternoon.  We were also given our daily tasks and cleaning duties.The main task was deep cleaning the kitchen again.  

This morning we tried a new thing called the 'joy jar' - a collection of paper slips are in a plastic jack-o-lantern pumpkin (it was as close to a jar as we could get).  We had to pick one each out of the jar and read it silently, before returning it to the 'jar'.  They all read different little things we could do to bring joy to other staff members days.  Mine was to randomly stick post-it-notes around the place with happy things on them.  I wrote things like 'Born Free, now expensive', 'when I count my blessings, I count you twice'.

  Scenic pic of the day: Our Chalet with Snow!

Whilst having a break in the T-Bar Filming, Rachael and I decided to do some more filming for our video.  It was the 'fake relaxing scene', where we were all sitting relaxing and we all cross our legs at the same time and drink tea (from empty cups) at the same time!

That afternoon Migue had planned to teach 2 of us, Ana and I, how to drive Boris, Sarah was finishing her run and joined along the way.  We got to earn an extra point on our Staff Challenge, by shoveling the snow off the car park bitumen.

 

 

At 3 pm we had a date Skyping the volunteers at Paxlodge, Bethany from Australia, Susanna from Columbia, Aubrey from New Jersey, USA, Amelia from Canada and Paty from Brazil.  

We talk and were taken on  a virtual tour of Paxlodge (though the internet didn't work very well!), then we took them on a mini tour of the Chalet and the new found snow! Susanna got very excited about the snow!

If you would like to follow the travels of Paxlodge's volunteers, Aubrey is blogging her adventures on Facebook underneath the page "A Girl Scout in London".

Here is a link: https://www.facebook.com/aGirlScoutinLondon?ref=ts&fref=ts

Dinner was Rostti and Ratatouille and dessert mini doughnuts.  After dinner we had 'Chloe's Game Night'.  We played games such as Over and Under with a balloon....  

Relay's by pushing the balloon with your nose up to the end of the dinning hall and back again... 

  

The weirdest of them all - Picking up the cereal box with your mouth, without anything but your feet touching the floor. There were some interesting techniques! I got all the way to the finals before I fell over, I couldn't pick up the flat piece of cardboard off the floor!

 

And 'Shark' - everyone sits in a circle around the parachute, one person is the life guard who runs around the outside and the other is the shark underneath the parachute.  The shark attempts to pull people under the parachute and 'kill' them, the life guard attempts to hold them above the parachute.  if the life guard manages to hold on and save the 'drowning' person they survive to stay on the edge of the parachute, if the shark wins the person 'dies' and becomes another shark.

 

snow fall

27/1/15

Overnight it appears that Switzerland and the weather collaborated and decided that they had held out on us long enough... and we finally got some snow! Apparently it is supposed to constantly snow from now until next Monday.

Today was Teaching Tuesday and although it was Rachael's day off, she had planned an afternoon class to teach us how to use Movie Maker on Windows computers.  That morning was spent cleaning and organizing the Main Chalet Attic.  We rearranged and made sure things were where they were supposed to be.  Ana said that she now knows how Harry Potter felt, sleeping under the stairs.  For negative 3 outside, it got quite hot inside under the roof! I was sweating by the end of it!!

After we had had lunch and a bit of a break, and our afternoon class with Rachael started at 3. We learnt how to use Movie Maker - how to input and export pictures and videos, how to add animations and text and how to add music as a backing track.  After we had finished our class, before we had to cook dinner, Jen surprised us with a new murder game for staff only. Stay tuned for further updates as to what happens during this game!

 We started dinner at four, we were making Spag Bog followed by ice-cream for dessert.  It was Mara's 25th Birthday, and as per Our Chalet tradition, we donned the tea cozies and grabbed our pots and pans and sung happy birthday in as many different languages as we could.  We started with with Finnish:

"Paljon onnea vaan, 

Paljon onnea vaan, 

Paljon onnea Mara,

Paljon onnea vaan"

australia day

26/1/15

AUSTRALIA DAY !

I might be in a different country, where the snow is falling, where everything is white, where the highest temperature it hit all day was minus five.  But I still celebrated the marvelous country I call home.  I was definitely not disappointed to be here in the cold however than at home, where it was 39 degrees, where my fellow Guide Leaders were out in force running the Arts Tent on the South Perth Foreshore.  They were melting they tell me...

  

Here at Our Chalet, we celebrated with tattoos and capes, Sarah even went the whole day wearing her socks and thongs (flip flops!).  Once again we were given our usual list of jobs, and we set to them.  Our main task was to clean the laundry in Stockli.  It seems to be the room of the Chalet where things get dumped when they have no where else to go.  

Between us we were able to move majority of the items which didn't belong there up to the Helen Storrow room, and then we were able to sort out and fold nicely what was supposed to be there!  I completely unstacked and restacked the linen cupboard... and then named it after myself! It was lonely as everything else in the Chalet is named and it wasn't.

Rachael and I finished our Australia Day the traditional way, with a cold cider from the fridge!

scones on sunday

25/1/15

We started the morning with our normal assortment of jobs and tasks.  Sweeping common areas, cleaning rooms and folding laundry.  Once again, Skippy was a great help.  It was a normal routine for the rest of the day, lunch was at 12:30.  Chloe's Dad arrived on the 2:54 bus, he is our only guest until Friday (Dessert every night!).

After lunch, mid afternoon, Chloe and Victoria had made scones with jam and cream for Sunday Sugar.  They were really really good!  



Dinner was Bratwurst, mashed potato, carrots and gravy.  Katrina had made a tradition Faroese rice pudding which we had for dessert.  It was served with cinnamon sugar and butter.  

night sledding

24/1/15

Today was my second day off.  My original plan was to go skiing again but after my full day yesterday I decided that I needed a day off and a break. 

So my lazy day: I didn't get up until 9:30 and I didn't shower or get dressed until just after 11.  Lunch was at 12:30 and then I came back to Stockli and chilled.   I watched some tv, read my book, made tea... a typical lazy day. 

At 4 pm Katrina and I got ready to head out. Tonight was the staff social night sledding on Tschenten and we had decided we would skip dinner and head up early to watch the sun set.  We left at 4.30 hiking down the hill into Oey to catch the gondola into town.  From town we caught another gondola up to the top of Tschenten.  It was quite foggy in town and I had hoped we would rise above it and have this spectacular veiw... unfortunately we didn't. Instead we just rose higher into fog.  So we didn't get to see the sunset; all we could see was the sun as a bright light in the distance.  

 

Apple Punch to keep us warm!

At 7 pm the other staff members Chloe,  Victoria, Mara, Jen, Tanya, Danielle, Rachael and Charlotte joined us at the top for night sledding. 

The ski people had lit up the three sledding runs down Tschenten.  It was still quite foggy when we first went down, which made it quite hard to see.   The lights ended up being just like obs or moons in the distant fog.  Charlotte likened the fog to the fog from Stephen King's book gone movie "The Mist".  When the chair lifts passed it was almost like a monster coming at you, you couldn't see them until they were basically next to you!

We got three runs in before the fog became so bad you couldn't see 20 m infront of you.  We waited at the top of the chair lift for everyone else and then headed back down and home to the Chalet.  Victoria and Chloe climbed onto the town fountain for a photo for their Staff Challenge for 'this season'!  Because they had done the 'normal' staff challenge before they have a special one, but it still has 'climb onto the town fountain to take a photo'.  Jen managed to do one of her challenges on her staff challenge today too - 'try nine different modes of transport in under 24hrs'.  I think she had walked, snowboarded, driven the van, rode in a car, ski-boked, sledded, gondola'd, chair lifted and one more which I can't remember!

  

Chloe's hair had frozen!

After putting away the sleds and skiboks, we all stripped off the layers and got into pjs.  Apparently it was -7 outside, no wonder we had all been so cold! Chloe made custard and Victoria made bread and butter pudding from some of the leftover gingerbread and the stale bread we had.  

skiing

23/1/15

Today was my first of two days off in a row.  I decided (and they allowed me!) the night before to go out skiing with some of the guests, Bill, Nikki and Isabella from the UK. I may have crashed their family skiing holiday, but I think they had a good time even teaching me how to ski!!  

We stopped for lunch at a hot chocolate at the bottom of Giles, and spent some time in the baby slopes with Isabella, who had never been on skis before.  By the end of the week she could ski quite well! 

Bill took me down a couple of blue slopes and taught me how properly turn.   Stand up and look over your shoulder.  Half way down one of our runs everyone was stopping on the slopes and taking oi cures of the sun. When we looked up we saw why; in the fog and glitter - like snow two circle rainbows had formed around the sun, then there was another half rainbow on the top of the second ring.  It was very impressive.  

We finished the day with a Gluwein at Peyton,  whilst waiting for Migue to pick us up in the van.  Dinner was Chicken Carbonara and Apple Crumble for dessert.

Handy Hint from Charlotte: when spelling dessert, it has two 's' because you want two helpings!

End of the Day Selfie

After dessert we had an impromptu campfire.