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!
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