To Cristina, With Love

This blog post is dedicated to my official blog schedule keeper, Cristina Higgins.

A lot has happened since my last post. First off, I have developed dimples. You can wear sunscreen to protect you from the sun, but there is no creme, lotion, or pill to prevent the dimples you will develop after smiling so much here. Ok,enough of that happy moment, on to my eventful four days.....

Thursday, Friday, and Sunday I trained at the Yacht and Beach pool side activities. It is a really fun job especially since the pool there is beyond amazing. The whole pool has sand on the bottom, there is a huge pirate ship slide, and the pool doubles as a lazy river. The activities include just playing simple games with the kids and throwing the dance parties. Since we wear a bathing suit under our costume, we are allowed to get into the water with the kids. Back in Walt's days, he only ordered certain costume sizes so if you didn't fit into a costume, you better Disney Diet to fit. Now, they order numerous sizes and most of them are on the larger side so I have trouble getting costumes to fit me. Since I don't go in the water, the kids find it HILARIOUS to splash me on the pool deck which results in me and my brand new kicks being soaked for the rest of the day. There is no worse feeling then walking around with wet socks and sneakers squishing. They will get theirs once I can get in the pool....

The evening activities are movies on the beach and a camp fire. Families are given bags of marshmallows but are allowed to bring their own smores kits or even hot dogs similar to Girl Scout campfires circa 1995. Because of the unpredictable Florida weather, we have had to move the movie inside the past five nights which isn't nearly ascool because the pre-show is the Epcot fireworks that you can see perfectly from the beach. Speaking of weather, I have never seen anyone freak out as much as they do here when dark clouds appear. They retreat like they are practicing for the apocalypse and most of the time the clouds pass and everything is fine.

Friday night after work Lauren and I decided to take an adventure to Sonic. I have never been and she had been craving it so we found one only a few miles away. When we got there, we found it was turned into Allababa (sp?) hookah bar. Swing and a miss. We looked at her Australian accent GPS and found another five miles away. We jumped on the toll road and headed to our slushie destination. We finally found an empty parking lot with no signs of a Sonic so we got back on the GPS and found another one again just another few miles away. We paid yet another toll and the GPS took us into a development. Clearly not it. Not to be discouraged, we looked up another one and when we arrived we found a shell of what was once a Sonic with the sign dangling from the building. Lauren was very disappointed so she called the last one on the list and asked on the phone, "Is this Sonic? Sonic drive-in? Sonic with food?" Once it was confirmed this place existed we headed out and I finally got to experience what the hype about cherry-limeade was all about (delicious, btw). 40 minutes in the car, 5dollars in tolls, $3.19 meal, all worth it. Instead of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle it was Sarah and Lauren go to Sonic, and it was worth every moment.

As I said earlier, I have a new soft spot in my heart for animals. However, I do not have one for the huge roach looking creature I found in my food cabinet upside-down still twitching and looking so sad. I started freaking out and had everyone in the apartment looking at it like a museum display. I did what any humane person would do and I left it there. until I eventually tried to turn it over but in the process I ended up accidently killing it. I guess I'll take these things over stinkbugs though.

The other day I ventured out to go food shopping. As I was getting in my car I saw a kid with a Rutgers shirt on and decided to ask if he was from NJ. He was and I asked where from and he no joke said Flemington. I was completely shocked and it turned out we know a lot of the same people, especially since he worked at Healthquest. Sing it with me now, "It's a small world, after all." He was very nice and we ended up going to dinner later that night and talked about how much we actually like F-town and how different it was being here. Not only did I meet my first Jersey intern, but one that is from my own town and lives 3 buildings away.

Going back to food shopping though. I was wearing my Mets hat because quite honestly I didn't shower yet that day. I got so many stares at the store from it and an employee actually told me I would be cooler if I were a Yankees fan. He then continued to follow me around the store and said he liked to know what his customers buy. Hmmm I have never heard this line before and he clearly was not getting I was ignoring him and continued shopping. Eventually he came back with a piece of paper with his number on it and his birthday. He said we should hang out and I told him I would have to see what my boyfriend thought of that. I clearly don't have a boyfriend, but my mom always taught me to blame stuff on her if I needed to get out of a bad situation and since she isn't here I decided to blame it on my fictious boyfriend. In my head he's tall, dark, and handsome. I kept getting more dirty looks because of the stupid hat and decided I will just need to cave and buy a new one, preferably one from a Florida team . Who knew a hat from a real ex-boyfriend could cause so much tension at a grocery store?

When I got back from shoppingone of the apartment mates was on the couch tearing up. Since I am a warm, nurturing person I asked her what was wrong hoping deep inside it wasn't a life crisis like her cat died. It turns out she was watching "The Bucket List" and it was the part where Morgan Freeman dies which moved her very much and I mean who wouldn't be? This is the man who just won the AFI Life Achievement award and has narrated every touching emotional movie out there. March of the Penguins, anyone? Relieved the tears were just over a fictional movie I continued unpacking my $63.18 worth of groceries.

It's been exactly two weeks since I started here and I know you all miss me terribly. I just have to say that I'm glad I'm here though and this experience, although it won't make me wealthy, will teach me so many things I can use in a future job. Someone upstairs must be watching over me because I have had such good luck with my job, location, and roommates that every once in a while something embarrassing happens like being unable to enter the cast parking lot and causing traffic to remind me this isn't a fantasy world. Disney does a good job of that, I mean as little girls we think that we will be singing in a well one day and a prince will just march right up with a white horse and fall in love with us. I guess it does happen to some people, after all Patti Ann was proposed to in front of her white horse.

Probably one of my happiest moments here was when I got to crown a family "family of the day." After our pool party at the Boardwalk resort I crowned a family with those big clown sunglasses because they participated in every activity and had so much fun, even the father was very supportive of all kids. The family was so happy and surprised, they had me get in a family picture with the kids! We make magical moments here, folks.

Happy Belated Fathers Day to all you fathers out here!