A Royal Workout

Get a load of the weather forecast above. Indeed, it feels exactly like April here, with large patches of grass on the slopes and balmy temperatures.
We went on a very energetic excursion the other day with my bad ass replacement for Harumi.  H has given birth to a little boy named Ted. (is that the cutest??) with a middle name in Japanese that means "snowed a lot" because he was born in a snow storm (obviously.)  So I was assigned a new teacher-Lizzie: basically the coolest woman ever. In the off season she is a serious rock climber and is just back from Patagonia climbing and dangling and cavorting with Alex Honnold.
Anyway, she takes all of us out the first day to see how we ski, and the next day, we give the kids away,  and she takes us into the wilds for some skinning (walking up hill in skis). I had of course told her that Andrew and M and T would be her star pupils in anything cardio; but I would be a problem after an hour and a half. No matter...she wasn't listening. She proceeds to make us walk for just a tad longer than I would have on my own. And by "tad" I mean "plenty".
But we had a good time: skiing on patches of snow and grass, and then taking off skis and walking in water and then some ice....it's too bizarre.
There are many beautiful women in the hotel-new mothers mostly, with beautiful sad faces and bored husbands. My friends had mused that is was depressing to face the prospect of being out shined by a new crop...and I could not relate. The reason is not some sort of greater self confidence on my part. On the contrary-it's just that my husband is not interested in underweighted bad skiers in Prada. My husband worships people like Lizzie. As well he should. Believe me, she is beyond....competent and talented and kind and so f ing brave. And isn't courage the single most attractive thing in a person? Don't we all want a piece of that? Women like her and Harumi make me proud: really, I bathe in their reflected glory.
Speaking of courage-my absolute favorite Arab man in the hotel has agreed to give the xmas speech tonight. This is sort of big news in our Schneider universe because he does this professionally; so it is bound to be good.  To give you an idea, the last speech he gave was basically an announcement to get people to sign up for the ski race, but it was so moving-some of the Austrians thought it was time to invade Poland again. (last Poland joke of 2015 I promise!)

I will make this one short because it is Christmas eve and that might require an entry to itself tomorrow. more soon xx