Getting our Irish up.

We have a batch of Irish girls here for about a week. They're fun kids, all excited for St. Patrick's day and skiing on real snow. They said it doesn't snow much near Dublin, where they're from, so they practiced on one of those slopes with plastic bristles. I've heard about it, and it sounds like skiing on triangular toothbrushes. They fared well in the snow, though they were shocked at how cold it gets up on the pistes. This batch of thirty is good practice for the seventy-odd Irish guests we'll get over Easter.

On St. Patrick's Day, I got up early to dye their milk, yogurt, and mayonaise green, then cut the Frühstückskäse (breakfast cheese) into shamrocks with a cookie cutter. A few were wary of the color of their hot chocolate, but they loved the cheese. I guess they don't dye the food in Ireland. I was surprised how into St. Patrick's Day they were, though. I'd thought it was more of an American tradition to actually celebrate it, but they went all out with Irish flags and facepaint.

I also took a batch of them on a night hike out to Bonderfälle (another set of waterfalls, these off the mountain behind the staff house). It had just dumped a lot of snow, so we didn't need torches or headlamps. We could see the path, what there was of it, by the glow of the moon reflecting off the snow. Bowie and I took only seven, since the remainder wanted to stay tucked away and warm, so we got just the intrepid hikers. We usually turn around after half an hour, but these kids wanted to see the falls. Only half of the path had been used at all, so we started off crossing the foothills through calf-deep snow. Their leader brought Snacks for when we actually made it to the Wasserfälle, which was good, because it was snowing so hard that it was whited out. Bowie rightly decided that it would be dangerous to follow the creek the last fifty meters, since the snow piled on the edges kept us from knowing where the true edge was. We'd be sure to lose an Irish girl in the stream. We couldn't even see the mountain, despite the fact that we were basically standing at the foot of its sheer cliff. Snacks, by the way, are Cadbury treats somewhat like mini Kit-Kat bars. Just the thing at the end of the uphill portion of the hike. The girls sang a bit on the way to the falls, but they were excited enough on the way back not to need to cheer themselves with music.