Staff challenge.

All I’ve done for two days is work. We had no guests for a while, due to a black-out week, and we’re nearly done with the spring cleaning. We have forty-odd people coming in for just tomorrow night, so we’ll need to prepare for them and then clean up after them as well. On the plus side, with just staff here, we have gotten a LOT done. We also have tea every day, and we’ve been getting creative with pastry dough.

Here are some spare pictures instead of a description of my work activities.

This is our Chalet cat. She's usually sweet, but she yowls something awful around dinner time and is good at interrupting your work for a quick pet.

Here's yet another couple pictures of some great mountains.


This is the staff having a snow picnic.

Here's the cable car at Engstligen falls. It's a bit of a tight squeeze going up with a lift full of skiers and gear, but it's a fun ride nonetheless.

This is what the locals do for fun in the winter, besides skiing, of course. Official timed sled races! One person steers and the other controls the speed, as far as I can tell.

Here's another fun winter activity I didn't take part in. It looks like fun, but I'll wait till I make it to Alaska.

This is your typical Swiss mother. The kidlets get their own mini sleeping bags and everyone goes out into the snow. I've also seen tots in backpacks during crosscountry ski trips or snowshow hikes.

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I decided to work on my Staff Challenge after work, since I didn’t have time to do anything exciting with my nights. One of our challenges is to climb the fire escapes. We have to do it as though we were fleeing a fire, though: out the window and down.

Other challenge activities include (bold if I’ve done them already):

• hiking at least three mountains (6000 meters total) [waiting for the snow to melt on the trails]
  
• camping overnight somewhere [waiting for warmer weather]
  
• staying submerged in a glacial lake or stream for five seconds [ditto]
  
• hiking to Kandersteg [ideally over the mountain pass]
  
• hiking to Dorf [Adelboden village] and back on your own at midnight
  
• cycling to Frutigen [will do soon.]
  
• skiing a red, blue, and black run
  
• tobogganing Tschenten or Silleren [I tried, but night sledding was closed on that occasion.]
  
• cross-country skiing Boden or Engstligen track
  
• explaining four Swiss hiking signs
  
• snowshoeing for two hours
  
• checking out the Adelboden night life
  
• climbing the fountain in town
  
• climbing the main chalet and Spycher fire escapes (one normal, one a rope ladder)
          
  
• sledging down Hohliebeweg (our road) at night
  
• climbing around a table without touching the ground
  
• sleeping in the attic of the main chalet, built in 1932 and reputedly gently haunted
  
• sleeping in the bomb shelter
  
• climbing through the old Swiss oven and writing a poem about it while inside
  
  
• writing a new Chalet song [Brazil did it, actually, but I learned and performed her version and they counted it.]
  
• cooking a traditional Swiss dish
  
• cooking a dish from your own country for the staff
  
• cooking dinner for everyone by yourself
  
• learning some Swiss-German
  
• watching a sunrise or sunset from the peak of Bonderspitz [waiting for the snow to melt on the trail]
  
• climbing into our commercial clothes dryer
  
  
• doing an extreme sport (canyoning, bungee jumping, paragliding, etc.)
  
• organizing a staff evening program
  
• traveling to somewhere in Switzerland

These are all worth one to five points, and we have to get eighty points to meet the challenge. I think I have about thirty points so far. I need to get going on these, and I need to get the ones I’ve done signed off. There are another twenty or so items on the list, some more boring than others.