Where did all the time go?

I am starting to lose track of which day it is, which is disappointing; part of the problem is that I've stopped writing what I'm doing each day in my diary,  which means that I can't think to myself "I'm in House today, so it must be Wednesday". Instead, all I know is that I am definitely in House, and the question of what day it is has to be discarded in favour of easier questions, such as "how much GH31 detergent do I put in with a wash that is roughly 5/8 full, and therefore right in the middle of a half load and a 3/4 load?" (the answer, by the way, depends on what you are washing. Kitchen articles, for example, take more than Pinks!) And to make matters even worse, I am going to have to start paying attention to what day it is quite soon!


For example, Kat is coming on Friday this week, and staying until Tuesday- or Wednesday, I can't remember. This means that I need to know when Friday is, and when Tuesday or Wednesday are, and not get them in the wrong order and drop Kat off at the station before I've picked her up (or not picked her up, if I get Friday wrong too). Still with me? Good, because the Wednesday before Kat is here we have a General Staff Meeting, which means I not only have to know which day that Wednesday is, but also not confuse it with the next Wednesday and leave Kat on her own while I go to a meeting that happened the week before (assuming that she is even here on that Wednesday and that it wasn't the Tuesday which she was supposed to go). Also, on the Sunday that she is here, we have Staff Evaluations so I need to remember which day Sunday is. So, that's (maybe) two Wednesdays, a Tuesday (maybe), a Friday and a Sunday. Oh and then the Thursday after Kat's gone it's Staff Day Out... or was the Wednesday? No it might be Wednesday, in which case Kat definitely goes on Tuesday... or if she is really going on Wednesday then I've made a right hash of organising things! Then on the Friday after Kat leaves we are deep cleaning the staffroom, so I need to get Friday right or Miguel will get very upset when I try and vacuum his bed when he's still in it. Thankfully I can distinguish between morning and afternoon still, so it's actually unlikely that I'll vacuum Miguel's bed while he's still in it; more likely I'll have stolen all his bedlinen before he goes to bed on the wrong day.


Anyway, sorry for that long and confusing paragraph. I am quite tired from my journey to Our Chalet today. For the uninitiated among you, Our Chalet is an international centre for the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (or WAGGGS, rather amusingly). It's essentially the same as KISC, I hear, but a bit smaller and rather prettier on the inside. I had a day off and an invitation from the maintenance guy over there, so I hiked over Bunderspitz and down to Adelboden, and amongst the plethora of chalets dotted around I finally found the one with a giant trefoil on it. Walking up, I was greeted by a rather friendly looking ginger cat, and I suppose it was my fault for picking it up but it still bit me, which I thought was unwelcoming to say the least. Setting aside whatever doubts I had germinating in the soil of my soul, however, I pressed on up to the chalet proper. A car was just pulling out as I got there, but there was still a car and a van left so I reasoned that there would be at least one person around. It is the quiet season after all, and the website said that they were renovating, but I figured that there must be someone around to feed the cat (or maybe not, which would explain the little horror from down the drive)
However, there was nobody there. The place seemed deserted. I knocked on a few doors, and peered in through a few windows, but nothing. It was like they'd seen a smelly boy coming up the drive, set the cat on me and all gone and hidden in the basement. I even rang the phone, to see if that could galvanise someone out of a cupboard of wherever they were hiding, but instead I just stared at the phone in the reception, three feet away from me, which stared back at me as it rung, and smugly remained unanswered. I sat down on a bench, hoping that the person who had driven off had just gone to the shops for a newspaper or something, and as I sat there two things happened: firstly, I remembered that Kristoff, who had invited me over in the first place, was on holiday and so not in. Secondly, another cat came and sat next to me. And then promptly started clawing at the bench. Understandably, I was a tad nervous. However, I didn't seem to be in immediate danger so I continued to sit there, refusing to be cowed by the threat of being shredded like a chicken. Understanding this, and obviously wishing to push the envelope a little further, the cat took an interest in my sandwich. It almost climbed into my lap to get to the sandwich, and when I gave it a corner of said sandwich it immediately ate the ham and cheese, and then left the bread! Speaking of sandwiches, have they always been spelt without the 'h' after the 'w'? Really? When did I start making that spelling mistake?!


Giving up on Our chalet as a bad job, I had to get the bus back home. At this stage I realised that I had no cash. This meant that I had to go all the way over to Adelboden to find a cash machine. Interestingly, it turns out that when they say that Our Chalet is in Adelboden, what they mean is that it's on the other side of a little valley and the village itself is set all the way up the hill, and the genius who designed the place thought that the best place for the cash machine was right at the top. So I missed my bus, and to be fair it could have been worse, but remember that I was still bearing a nasty cat bite and the disappointment of no girl guides to show me round their stupid centre, so it was a crushing end to the day! The hike itself was lovely, though; perfect weather, and no blisters which is always a bonus!


Anyway, I need to do some captions on the Facebook photos from my time here, so I guess that's all for now! And who knows, by the next blog post I might be a Pinkie no longer...

The Two-thirds-of-the-way-mark

The lights in the staffroom are terrible. The energy saving light bulbs seem to be saving energy by no actually illuminating anything, and the only saving grace is the lamp that stands near the window, which manages to single-handedly illuminate the entire room. It's the one thing that I would change about KISC if I had the opportunity; I love the work, the food is good, and the people are all wonderful, but my God the staffroom is dingy in the evenings!


The evenings are getting colder now; down to -6 on some nights. I only know this because Mum and Dad have just visited and I saw the temperature in the rental car they had for the trip. It was lovely to see them, and it also meant that I finally made it out of the valleys and into a real city- Bern. It's a beautiful city, though I wasn't entirely sure what to make of the architecture; some bits were very German, but there were some bits that you could convince yourself were Italian if it hadn't been for the freezing cold. I also managed to purchase (finally) a soft-shell jacket, at a very reasonable price, so the whole trip was really rather nice! However, they have now gone home again, leaving at 5am this morning to get the plane (and in typical Dad style, Dad took the room key with him!) They've taken some of my clothes home with them, so hopefully my bag should actually fit all my stuff in it properly for the return journey instead of bulging out at every angle, threatening to burst like an overstuffed pillow if I so much as look at it wrong. And also, them going home marks the two-thirds point of my stay here at KISC.


I am due home on the 20th December, staying for an additional 10 days as a helper while the new Shorties are trained up and some of the long-term staff are also trained up (apparently they need training too, and are not just born with the skills they need as it sometimes seems!). It's a strange period of time, because I'm unsure of whether to start reminiscing about the good times had in preparation for the journey home, or whether I should still be thinking that I have ages until I'm leaving this fantastic place. There is just over a month left of my time here; in some ways that is a long time (or will be if I start preparing to leave) and in other ways it's still quite a long time to go. In the meantime I'll just settle for cracking on with work. Two days in a row of catering this week, and despite my earlier grumbles in past posts about catering it has been a lot of fun. Wednesday morning saw me completely on my own, pottering around the kitchen washing up the three spoons that got used at breakfast and making what was (apparently) a very successful orange sponge cake for Pol's birthday. Today it's been me and Rikke, and after a devastatingly uneventful morning, in which the Spanish Omelet still managed to be about 10 minutes late due to the egg refusing to cook, we are looking at whipping up some soup and sweet and sour pork for dinner. Then hopefully this evening we shall be watching the Lord of the Rings (because any spare three hours in your life can hardly be filled with anything more suitable) and then, this weekend, I have a very exciting job. In the village this weekend there is some sort of fair going on, and KISC is having a large black German tent with a fire and some games. And I get to help run it! How cool is that?! I can't decide whether I am more excited about the tent or the fire or what, but I am very much looking forward to it, before getting back to work at the centre next week.


That's about all for now, I think I'll just read a bit more of my book before I get back in the kitchen...

Musings upon Britishness, the state of homeliness and the nature of time

The last two days in a row have seen some of us watching Monty Python films- The Meaning of Life, and And Now For Something Completely Different- and the welcome blast of Englishness has prepared me for my parents visiting tomorrow. It's strange how much I miss British speech; although hardly common, the odd "by Jove" and "I say" really make me feel at home! But thinking of being at home, it really is remarkable how quickly KISC came to feel like home. The familiarity of the centre has already reached the stage where moving something around- such as cooking in the guest kitchens while we deep-clean the normal kitchen- just doesn't feel right, and the return to the normal kitchen today actually caused a palpable wave of relief to flow through me. It's a shame, then, that I am already in my last four weeks as a shortie here at KISC!


Somehow, somewhere, the time has gone. It's not that I've not done anything while I've been here; last week Johan and I went up the Niesenbahn (the steepest funicular railway I've ever been on, and certainly the longest!) and saw some of the best views I've yet seen of the Kander valley. I've also done lots of work, including splitting tree trunks as big as tractor tyres and building a floor. It really is like they told us when we started; the time just disappears! Which, it must be said, is better than it crawling by. Which, paradoxically, it is doing now. I am on duty, which means that I can't go to bed until at least 10:30 in case one of the four guests we have in the chalet right now needs something. At 10:30 I have to go on a walk round the centre, making sure that all the right doors are locked, lights are off, and that anybody who hasn't yet arrived knows where they have to go. It's ironic that I was thinking only a few days ago that it had been weeks since I was on duty, and that I actually missed being the one who gives their thought for the day in the morning, and now here I am wishing the time would go faster so I can go to bed! Incidentally, my thought this morning can be viewed here and is well worth a watch if you've not already seen it! And if you have, then why not watch it again?


I've just noticed the loose, disconnected prose that this blog is becoming. Usually I write something down in my journal before posting it here, so it has time to be thought out a bit more and maybe edited slightly before making it out where literally tens of people will read it. Right now, however, I am pretty much free writing. Just fingers to keyboard, and if the brain gets in the way first with a thought then so much the better. I apologise, therefore, if this post is a little sloppier than some of my other ones. I will do a proper blog post soon, promise! Maybe after Mum and Dad have gone on Thursday...

Climbing and Schwingen from the rafters!

I did my first real rock climb on Tuesday- very rewarding! Jon Morgan and I did 6 pitches (apparently that means a rope length, about 50m) to the top of this rock and then 3 abseils down. It was quite tough, but it was fantastic to get to the top and look down at what we had come up! I'm not sure whether I prefer it to hiking, but I definitely hope to go again! Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much longer we will get to do exciting activities like that; the weather is due to close in any day now. Yesterday we had a fern, which is a strong and sometimes warm wind which howls down the valley (and makes all the flags wrap around the flagpoles in strange and incomprehensible ways, which is a real pain when you're in House, as I am today!) and after the fern we usually get either rain or snow. It's been cloudy ever since the fern, and apparently at the weekend it's due to get worse, so hiking may be off but who knows- skiing and sledging may well be on!

Work-wise it's been quite a good week; yesterday I was in grounds, splitting tree-trunks with Johan and Sam, and refilling the sauna's woodstore. In the wake of the tree-trunk splitting a man-points chart has been put up in the staff-room, to document all the manly (or unmanly) activities that go on amongst the staff. So far Pol has lost points for bullying a girl, and Kyle has gained points for a fart. It's a promising start, to  be sure. Today is House, which is quite fun despite the flags of doom- quite a few check-ins to do, and I managed to have a great session cleaning bathrooms listening to Pete Tong on the essential mix from 2002 (look it up, it's a fantastic track!) Alas, on the PR front progress on the blog remains slow. However, now that Pol is back off holiday I can hopefully learn to use the Mac's editing software (unfortunately Windows Movie Maker just doesn't cut the mustard for what I want to do!). It is a shame, since I have always tried to avoid Mac on the grounds that I don't like them, but then sometimes we just have to man up and get on with life!

On Tuesday, in addition to climbing, the whole staff team went out to learn how to do Schwingen, which is a Swiss wrestling style invented by farmers. The rules  of this sport which is woefully underplayed in the UK are fairly simple; you play in a ring with sawdust on the floor, and each combatant wears special shorts with a leather belt. Each opponent has one hand on their opponents belt at the back of the shorts, and another on their leg, and the idea is to get your opponent onto their back. We had a blast, and some of us weren't even that bad at it! I came away with a bruised toe, crushed finger, and aches which are only now showing on Friday (though some of that might be from the manly log-splittng which we were doing).

I don't know what I'm doing after lunch, but I'm going to leave now so that I can relax a bit before getting back to work!