I've just now, for the first time, put up the small table that is in the room Miguel and I share, so now I can type at a reasonable angle with the added bonus of being able to hear the sounds of sheep bells, cow bells, and birds (who oddly enough have not been outfitted with bells, although I suspect it's just a matter of time) drifting in through my window. Thirty minutes left of my lunchbreak, but when the afternoon's activity is strolling around the campsite with a lawnmower in the glorious sunshine, it's a bit hard to tell where break ends and work begins.
We are now two weeks into our time at KISC, and already it's getting hard to remember how long I've been here- I keep having a suspicious feeling that I've been here forever, but have somehow been missed off the staff boards from previous years. Speaking of staff boards, we did manage to get ours finished finally, and only a week late. It's in the style of a Pacman board, with the senior members of staff as Pacmen while the rest of us are either ghosts or fruit. Not a bad effort, and considering that by the end of it we really didn't care any more it could have gone a whole lot worse. And of course, finishing the staff board means that we now have access to the staff bikes! This has of course increased the range which we can rove about dramatically, although I managed to surpass myself by knackering my wrist before we had even been given the staff bikes to use! The fault mainly lies with Swiss bike manufacturers, who have unhelpfully put the brakes round the opposite way to English bikes, which means that when I get out of the pub and want to borrow a bike off a long term staff member to do an awesome skid, instead I end up doing front flips which result in a bandaged wrist and an X-ray (an X-ray which is now proudly taped to the window so people can see my healthy unbroken wrist, and is soon to be joined by Rikke's X-ray of her foot, which she hurt at football training last night). But my wrist didn't stop me from doing things like cleaning out a walk-in fridge, cleaning (and naming) trollies in the kitchen, mopping, or laying a floor in the Irish room, which is being renovated this Autumn.
Work here begins each day at 8am, with Thought for the Day. This is usually some sort of game, or little thing to get everyone awake for the day ahead, and also a good time for any notices about anything that needs mentioning. The exception to this is if you are working in catering, when you have to be in work at 7am to get breakfast ready for 7:30! Alternatively, if you are Kyle, then you sleep through until 7:56 and get woken up by your roommate with just enough time to get to Thought for the Day. Then we work through in whatever department we are in for the day until 10, when we have our first coffee break. Sometime between 10:15 and 10:30 we pick ourselves up again and carry on working until 12, when blessed lunch is served! If you aren't in catering you then get a lovely break until 2, when work begins again; catering have to clean up after lunch which is a bit sad, but they do then get a massive break (usually starting between 1 and 1:30) until 4:30, when they start getting dinner ready for 6. The rest of us get another coffee break at 4, and then work is officially over after dinner- time to kick back! Unless, that is, you are on duty. If you are on duty, then you have to man the phones during lunch and between the time dinner starts and 10:30pm. You also have to come up with a thought for the day, and help the kitchen with the cleaning up after lunch and dinner. A bit of a pain, but someone has to do it!
We are lucky in the Autumn season in that we get to work in all the areas of the centre's life: catering, house (laundry and cleaning), maintenance, grounds and on Sundays one of us gets to spend time in the admin office doing paper shuffling. And even that is quite fun, as for the minute it consists of scanning in the centre's collection of photographs, which is essentially an excuse to spend your day looking at various pictures of the chalet, learning about its history and suchlike. We've also nearly all had a go at being on duty on our own (our first duty was done with a long term staff member who could catch us before we did anything stupid like take a booking for four thousand lemmings staying in the sauna room, or something like that), which also means we've all missed something fun going on in the evening- on duty you are not allowed to drink or leave the chalet, so it's usually on the day you have duty that all the most exciting things happen. On my duty day, there was a flat warming party for one of the long term staff, but instead I had to stay in and check in French and German people, and take calls from the rest of the Short Term staff who got lost on the way to the flat warming party.
That said, it's not all work here. So far on my days off I have been up to Bunderspitz, and I have practically been up to the Jegertosse, which is an Alpine meadow, as well. I say practically because while we made it up to the alpine meadow that is the Jegertosse, the path we were following actually terminates at a wooden cross, a fact we only discovered upon getting back to KISC, when I asked Alexandros where the path went after Jegertosse. Turns out that we were only about 200m from the end of the path anyway, which is annoying but means that we could probably fudge it if anyone asks us whether we made it up there. Bunderspitz was much more exciting in some ways, as we were 400m higher than Jegertosse (2546m above sea level) and it was an actual top, which is more satisfying to stand on than a meadow (though the view while having lunch in a field with clouds below us was rather special, I must admit) This week coming I am planning to take a half day and climb the Via Ferata (essentially a permanent climbing route up a waterfall) and a full day to do the three valleys hike with some of the long term staff. Should be great fun!
Informative read... I now have blog envy!'
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