Davos - Day One
Day One
Well, here we are. We’ve made it! After an uneventful, but very tiring twenty-two-hour journey, we are safely installed in the Jugendherberge Davos, and this is a stunningly beautiful place! More on this later, when we share Mr Ramsey’s already extensive portfolio of photographs. Who knew we were travelling with an Ansel Adams wannabe? If you don’t know who he is, Google him; that’s what we did. Every day is a learning day!
So, what have learned so far? So much! This isn’t going to be in chronological order because we just must start with the moment of the day, which occurred right at the end of the coach journey. Picture the scene: forty-seven tired students and five exhausted teachers disembarking from the coach for the final time. It’s Davos; there’s snow and ice on the ground, so everyone is alighting from the coach carefully, tentatively even. I mean no-one wants to get injured before they’ve even put a pair of skis on, do they? You’d think not, but then no one bargained for our very own Jayne Torvill (Google that one too, if you need to) in the form of Miss Jones, our spirited but somewhat limited in the skills of ice dance, PE teacher. Now, we’re no ice-dance experts, but we’re fairly sure that attempting a somersault from a standing start is not part of the usual routine and from memory, certainly didn’t appear in the famous gold winning medal dance to Maurice Ravel’s Boléro by Torvill and Dean in the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. But that wasn’t putting Miss Jones off. Down the steps she came, looking every bit the elegant, graceful Elizabeth Taylor, (we’re thinking the Cleopatra years and without the eight husbands) of Ridgewood High School. She even had the obligatory diva bags on both arms, although we’re not sure if Liz ever carried an ASDA bag for life, full of sick bags and other paraphernalia associated with travelling with forty-seven teenagers. We digress. Once the heel of Miss Jones’s leading shoe made contact with the iced floor, the vision before us transformed itself into something rather more difficult to describe. Imagine a giraffe, with a particularly well-greased roller boot on each hoof, attempting to perform a backflip, while its neck is caught in the upper branches of a large acacia tree, and its head is trying to twist towards an audience of astounded antelopes. In short, it was a grisly flailing and tangling of limbs, punctuated by short northern exclamations of surprise. The result: a crumpled heap on the Davos floor, where it was difficult to discern between the ASDA bags for life and the prostrate PE teacher.
Now, that would be enough to derail many a lesser person from their plans of having a great time with our wonderful team. But not our Miss Jones. She’s made of sterner stuff and up was upright within seconds, dusting herself down and muttering some incoherent East Yorkshire exclamations – all very clean though. Which is more than can be said for her clothes and the long-suffering ASDA bag for life, which doesn’t look like it's going to see the week out. Anyway, Miss Jones is fine and raring to go, probably towards her next calamity!
Now, back to Mr Snap Happy. As soon as there was a mention of mountains, out came Mr Ramsey’s Box Brownie. Well, some of us thought that’s what he was going to produce, but actually Mr Ramsey is a thoroughly modern man and is equipped with a cutting-edge digital camera that performs many functions. He did tell us but as the human brain has limited working memory, by the time he’d got to the end of his extensive, and I mean extensive, talk on the many wonderful features of his camera, most of initial information had dropped out of our brains. No matter: the lecture ended abruptly when the first mountain offered itself up for Sir’s scrutiny. At this point, an ‘I do’ (a teaching strategy for modelling skills and application of knowledge to students) monologue began, where every, and we mean every, single shot was accompanied by an expert exposition of the process employed in
capturing the subject, followed by a lengthy critical evaluation of the image captured. Now you may think that we are poking just the smallest amount of fun at this Ridgewood legend, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, although it must be said that the masterclass in the digital photography of Swiss mountains, lakes and goats did prove to be a tonic for Mr Duff’s insomnia. Please feast your eyes on some of the wonderful landscapes captured by Mr Ramsey below.
In other brief news:
DFDS Ferries’ Duty-Free Shop rinsed of chocolate and sweets by swarm of locusts, disguised as secondary school children.
A similar phenomenon was occurred when the boys discovered a pizza restaurant on the ferry.
Miss Harper fails to elevate I Spy to the number one coach game and receives warning to desist in the advocacy of this terrible, terrible game, which only serves to remind players that they have spent a considerable amount of time on a coach.
Reverse psychology observed when one Year 8 student, who had stayed awake throughout the night, immediately fell asleep when everyone was told to wake up in readiness for going through Swiss customs.
We have a student, no names but they know who they are, who seems to have evolved an involuntary talking gene, meaning that like breathing, talking requires no conscious effort. We reckon there’s a few people thinking, ‘I know who that is.’ You could all have different answers, and all be correct.
We’ve had a great start to the week and as usual, Ridgewood students have been a credit to themselves and the school. Skiing starts on Sunday and we’re sure we’ll have plenty to share in a day or two.
Bye for now!