Yes, I do work.

So a lot of you faithful readers are constantly remarking, "do you ever work?"

Yes, I do work.

I think it's time to give a little glimpse of the day-to-day life of a volunteer.

There are two types of days a volunteer could have - guest services or program.

If you are on guest services, you report to the kitchen at 7:30am to set up breakfast. It is buffet style so you set up all the food, dishes, utensils, drinks, and make sure that stuff doesn't run out. Then at 8:45, you clean up. You take up all the food and either dispose of it or label it and put it in the fridge. You do the dishes and clean up the kitchen. You then report to the morning meeting where you get your tasks for the day. The morning is spent on cleaning. You will perform a variety of tasks from the following list:

Laundry - bed linens, towels, kitchen stuff, etc.
Cleaning bathrooms - toilets, showers, sinks, bathtubs, etc.
Cleaning guest rooms after they've checked out
Setting up rooms for guests checking in
Mopping
Vacuuming
Taking out the trash, recyclables, compost, and food scraps
Taking the trash down to the silver bins
Cleaning mold off ceilings
Dusting storage cellars
Restocking supplies
ETC.
ETC.
ETC.

Then you have lunch at 12:30pm with all staff on duty and on-site. It's usually left overs since we can't feed them to the guests. And we always have dessert :). After that, we get a break, ranging from 1.5-2 hours. Just enough time to work on this post!

After break, some of us report to the kitchen for cleaning and dinner preparation. The others are assigned various tasks - ground maintenance, working on upcoming programmes, etc.

Then at about 5pm, you start preparing dinner - chopping, boiling, measuring, weighing, retrieving, wiping off, rinsing off, etc.

6 or 6:30p is dinner.

After dinner, you clean up. Do all the dishes, label and store left overs, and clean the kitchen - sweep and mop floor, scrub all counter surfaces, scrub down Wendy (the dishwasher), wipe down oven and stove, take out compost, recycling, trash, and food scraps, wipe down tables, etc.

And then about 8:00p, you are done for the evening. A solid 12-13 hour day.

Now, for those on programme it ranges from day-to-day. Some of my adventures are from days I was on program, but basically, you'd start the day with a meeting at 8:30am, and then depart for the program at 9am. You spend the day on whatever was planned basically babysitting the guests and participating when appropriate, and then come back to Our Chalet around 5pm. You then have a break before dinner. After dinner, you are in charge of evening program, which is a variety of activities for the guests. The list includes - international night (guests give presentations about their respective countries. It can be teaching songs, dances, explaining traditions, talking about what the country is famous for, etc.), Swiss night (we teach the guests about Swiss traditions including fondue), movie night (they watch a movie about the history of Adelboden), games and sports night (I had them play musical bingo that night), campfire, night hike, and other activities. You're day ends around 9:30pm. A good healthy 13 hour day.

So yes, I do work. It just looks like and is a lot more fun that where all of you work. :-P