Lechy-Lech

Hello people!
Arrived in good order...a few days in Munich which are wonderful AND horrible with confusing sleep and moments when I wonder why we don¨t stay home-but the Schneider bus comes to get us and things start to look up. We arrived to sunshine...and big wet kisses from Katia and Gerold...and best of all, when we got to our room, little knocks on the door and Ida and Luis are hopping around in greeting and we feel like we are home. (Katia tells us that when Gerold told him Frederick was here, he said again and again: MY Frederick?!!)He is immediately eating at the Schneider table...only for family and VIPS (I have never sat there) and a sleep over. Poor eva and claus did not lay eyes on him for the first 24 hours.
Most fun development is Tricia and Chuck Sellman who are living in Paris for the year are spending the week in Lech. they have two kids, friends of chicos-age 8 and 12 and all three of them get into the same ski class and they wander back and forth between hotels and order topfen strudel at their own table every afternoon after class. Too much.
So we go skiing. thomas hires a teacher for the Sellmans and me .....and we get this man who says he has recently gotten over an accident where he was hit on the head, has only just gotten back his ability to speak German and no English whatsoever. Patricia is concerned. Especially because we are going out of bounds and we do not have Pieps to find us in case of avalanche and when he sees something bad like a rock or a hole (!) he says it really fast in German. and they say What DOES STEIN MEAN Ellie??!!! it is beyond ridiculous because it means rock. The last run is actually scary. We are in a place that Thomas and other good skiers from the hotel say we had no business being in, without this avalanche stuff...and we kind of knew it when we were there. But to confirm our suspicions, when we get back to apres ski in the warm bosom of Frau Schneider's bar, we look at the picture Gisbert has taken of the three of us, and it is a picture of the ground. Thomas now realizes we might have been in danger with a mildly retarded teacher in the outbacks and goes to gently get rid of him and hires anew. Above is a picture of new guide Wolfgang.
Tricia literally claps her hands together in glee when she sees what looks to me like a joke.....a harlequin romance novel rendition of "Wolfgang the ski guide"..She is so enamored with him in fact that she makes a fatal error of telling him: I really like to be pushed to the edge of my ability....She simply dose not understand why I am doing my normal spiel of telling the Austrian guides that I am paranoid...afraid of the back pack I have to carry with shovel..afraid of helicopters, afraid of everything and a danger to myself and others. She keeps piping in that we are decent...but the point is one must mellow them out...lower expectations dramatically and you will have a very hard day still. But no...Now I do not have Andrew and Margaret's lung capacity..but I am pretty used to this torture, and she says she has done absolutely zero exercise for the past year in France....and at the end of the day she tells me she is totally exhausted and can go no more and then Wolfgang drops off the edge into horrible horrible thick un-skiable snow for a nice long run to the bottom of the NEXT town over...meaning we are really fucking far from Lunch. I have no sympathy however because she got us into this and tell her to enjoy the view. She just called me from her bed, saying she is paralyzed from the waist down.
I think he had fun though....he was nice enough about my skiing, but says I need to work on the mental side. the trust-your-ski-guide side. Perhaps this is because I would periodically ask him if he was so so worried.

Tomorrow last day with Wolfgang...he has other clients...but Thomas says we can go with his...and all our little shovels.

Miss you!!!!!!