My Routine.

8:00 Wake up, scalding shower, sit in bed and study German vocab for an hour (I am trying to do 100 words a day, which is hard after the first few days)

9:00 Get into bright red Tiroler Schischule uniform. Get gloves and hat and goggle etc. Go into the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea and some small breakfast and sit with Berry and Nadie. We are quiet in the mornings, but we take a lot of pleasure in eachother's company. At least, I do in theirs, and I truly think they are beginning to like me.

9:30 We go together to the ski school Office where the nice Austrian lady behind the desk chirps "Percy!" (she loves me and is always talking about my pretty eyes and my nice smile). At the office we get our schedule for the day and then we go to the ski school.

10:00 I teach the Schneepferdchen (which means snow horses) the youngest group on the slopes. They are 3-5 years old, dressed adorably in ridiculous pink and blue costumes and lovingly (but annoyingly) taken care of at every moment by gaggles of parents. Teaching these little fellas is all I can do with my limited German, and I can't even quite do that so I assist a woman named Gisella. Basically she puts their skis parallel and pushes them down the slope and I catch them, tell them Gut Gemackt, and send them back up on the little escalator thing. Some of the older ones do learn to actually ski a bit, but for the younger ones it is essentially day care. As crazy and stressful as it can be, with 12 children simultaneously weeping, screaming, sliding away down the hill Gisella shouts orders to me in German, I love it. I love the little kids, they are adorable and so much fun whenever they are not crying. I have tons of patience of it and actually get quite good and helping them learn to ski, playing games with them to keep them interested, cheering them up when they cry, helping them when they fall, etc. etc. It is rewarding as they are very sweet and take to me pretty quick. Some of them are evil little bastards its true, but I just say nasty things to them in English and they can't understand (not really). They are great people to practice my German on though because there is not a lot of pressure to impress. Every day I come to the lesson with a handful of new phrases. I learn quickly that I am THE ONLY person at the ski school who doesn't HATE teaching the Schneepferdchen, who are universally feared and avoided by all the other teachers. I don't mind. I like the work, although it truly can be very trying. And I am, I think, good at it, or getting good. One boy said I was the best teacher he had ever had, and the next day I saw him shooting down the slopes without the aid of any parent or anything, with great confidence and form, so I thought I had done a good job. And one set of parents (admittedly British, not German) came up to me and told me how wonderful they thought I had been with the kids, which was of course very gratifying, especially considering how terrified of a parent freaking out because I don't speak their kid's language. I feel like if a parent finds that they will be very angry but so far they have been fine. Slowly but surely, Gisella, who is a fantastic teacher and great with kids, but very short and impatient with me, is warming up to me and we are starting to work as more of a team. I can joke with the kids, make funny faces and noises, and try and figure out what language they speak to comfort them when they break down (they mostly speak German, which I can sort of do. I have had two English kids who were easy of course, several Dutch, lost cause, and one French girl, to whom I repeated Sa va bien? until she stopped crying. For two hours we slide them up and down the slope, play games, put them on a skiing carousel, and let them ride in the snow train. It is work at times, but it is good work.

12:00 At noon the morning lesson is over and I go home and make myself some lunch. I sit on the balcony in the sunshine (it is really sunny here, which is fantastic, but bad for the snow of course. Luckily, it snowed heavily before I got here so the snow is only now starting to disappear, and it should snow again soon. For now though, the weather is gorgeous). I make myself a sumptuous feast of leftovers and a sandwich and I sit in the sunshine with a cold drink and read my book about Argentina, the next segment of the trip which I am eagerly planning. Reading about it is a huge treat and I allow myself one chapter a day. Then I listen to a movement of a Mahler Symphony while reading the score, which is fantastically therapeutic as well as intellectually stimulating and fun. I have just finished symphony number one so that leaves 8 to go, although I know the second already quite well. Finally, having had a short break from stress, I launch back into my German lessons, and study hard for another hour or so. The church bells here always ring very consistently right on the quarters of the hour so at...

1:30 I get my ski gear back on (this time incognito, normal black jacket etc instead of the ski school uniform) and go out to the hill and continue teaching myself to ski. It is utterly exhilirating to learn, and I pick it up fast. Within a day I am doing proper parallel turns, within two I am improving my form and using poles on an intermediate slope, and in three I am on a serious slope moving along at a decent pace with decent confidence. I ski right until the lifts close.

4:30 The lifts closed, I return to the apartment, shower (always incredible after a day in the snow), and spend the afternoon on German.

7ish Nadie and Berry come back from the bar eventually (I have stopped really going to the bars since my walk-out, which makes me slightly antisocial but it is nicer for me and as I already have some pretty established friends now it is no problem). Actually Nadie doesn't go out much either, but more about both of them later. One of us makes dinner (Berry is a great cook, Nadie is good, and I am getting good), and we have a really nice mellow evening.
And then, eventually we part ways and head to sleep, exhausted by the work and the glare of the snow and the heat of the sun.