I started writing an email to someone a couple of nights ago in Word when the internet was fried. I ended up never sending it. So I figure I'll just edit and post it here. So this is late Tuesday night/ early Wednesday morning....

There are just too many fun things to do here! Last night I was supposed to go to the gym and whatnot but found myself at a dinner show, Arabian Nights. The show itself wasn’t very good, the food was fine, and the beer/wine/soda was all you can drink. I got a wee bit tipsy. Shocking, I know. The show usually costs $50.00 or so but the first Tuesday of every night there is an offer for WDW castmembers to go for eight freaking dollars! How cheap is that?!?! I didn’t even have to chip in the for the cab there or back because it is tradition that the folk in tipped positions, provided enough of them go, cover the cost of the cab because they make in one night what the untipped folk make in, well, a week. No lie. So I should be putting in the effort to learn my menu right now, but I find it very hard to bother putting in the effort. I guess I got pretty accustomed to the slacker way of life since university ended! But I’m going to learn my menu…. The dinero is quite enticing. However, I find I get bored of positions easily so I don’t want to get into serving too early on or else I’ll be sick of it by March!

Things here are quite good! I won some kind of award thingie at work for good customer service (the generic term, not the Disney terms of “Take 5 Moments” or “Making Magic”). Weeeee! I’m getting along well with my roomie and housemates and am starting to hang out with some more people.

Tonight I am going out for a friend’s birthday. Splurging on a $25.00 meal but it’s supposed to be amaaaaazing. It’s at a Disney resort called the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It’s African themed so it should be pretty interesting! I’ve been to the resort (Disney never calls accommodations hotels :P ) before and it’s pretty cool – there are giraffes and other animals wandering just outside the hotel! Disney sometimes skimps and does things on the cheap (a testimate to previous management that is no longer in the company) but they did quite go all out with this place.

I’m going to be the size of a small whale by the time I go home. I think one reason for the menu slacking and glutonous eating is that I feel like I’m constantly on holiday. Seriously, this is like a year-long holiday and it’s hard to get into the “real life” way of life that includes actually COOKING and being responsible. So come next week, I’m returning to my gym groove (which is hard when you sometimes spend twelve hours a day standing) and am going to actually start cooking and not eating cereal 400x a day. I’m basically telling you this to shame myself into “healthy living” practices.

One thing I LOVE about it here is learning about the different positions around the resort. Each month there is a schedule of people giving talks about their roles in the company. Some of them look pretty bland judging by the five-line description, but some look pretty interesting. There are also one- or two-hour sessions on various bits of history about the company, behind the scenes tours, and other stuff I gobble up as a fan. I want to explore Florida, but I will admit staying in Orlando on my days off is pretty appealing as there is soooo much to do here. I figure I’ll be sick of the Disney parks soon enough. Today is a shopping day as I haven’t really shopped since arriving here.

Hurricane Wilma hit Florida and some parts of Miami and Fort Lauderdale were without power for a good week. Lots of those folk came up to Disney World to kill some time which resulted in an extremely busy week for us. The hurricane didn’t affect me too much, it was just ridiculously windy and rainy for awhile. Then I hustled off to work for clean-up duty and got slack from a few guests because not everything was open. Umm, considering a HURRICANE had been in the park a mere two-hours earlier I thought we were doing pretty well restocking kiosks and putting all the stuff back together that we had stripped bare the night before. Honestly, SOOOOO much work goes into hurricane preparation. The storm itself probably lasted for only four-five hours, but the labour that goes into moving things indoors and then moving it all back outdoors is right mad. And besides some our Food and Wine Festival being closed, by supper time you would have never known that there had been a hurricane all morning and into the afternoon. Huge props to the custodial crew, they did an amazing job! In fact, they got the place spick and span and I hardly even noticed them. They were subtle!

One thing I love about working the food and wine festival is how many new people I got to meet! Many of the F&W castmembers are either American students on the college programme or older workers that pop out of retirement once in awhile for random work. Some are pretty interesting to talk to – they travel the continent in their RVs working or volunteering post “official” retirement. I think I would like to do that when I pass the half-century mark. Honestly, I’m going to have a hard time saying good-bye to some of the college students, especially some of the cooks that have been working in our kiosk. We have spent SO much time with them over the past weeks that, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to be kind of sad when food and wine ends. I know I have some teary good-byes coming my way in the next month of so. =( I actually had my first tear-shed about someone leaving just this week. It makes me realize how fast this year is going to go and it really scares me. There are people that I mean to hang out with but never end of meeting up. I feel, “Hey, there’s lots of time!” but TWO MONTHS have almost passed already. Scary stuff!

This year I had THREE different costumes for Hallowe’en. First up was my super hero costume that I wore to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Hallowe’en Party a few weeks ago. At a Hallowe’en party this weekend I dressed up as a campfire. Shockingly, no one else had the same costume as me. Last night for Hallowe’en we were supposed to go as pirates as part of the “Canadian Girls Drinking Team”. I obliged and splurged and entire $.75 on my costume. Three cheers for a yard of red and white striped fabric from Wal-Mart!

I’ve been practicing my French lately in an effort to get the “I speak French!” portion of my name tag. Basically it is a small attachment of the French flag onto my name badge. After I get the French flag I would like to work toward the Spanish flag but that’ll take a LOT of work on my part! Spanish is SUCH a fast language. Many of the F&W cooks are from Puerto Rico or speak Spanish and they talk so quickly that I find it hard to catch much of what they say. However, I’m going to try as I’m in a good environment to learn.

**** And that's when I stopped typing and started yaking on the phone or something.

Anyway, now to hang up wet laundry. We have a dryer here but I don't use it. I'm energy efficient! But I do need to buy a drying rack... The hangers kind of leave my clothes smelling like metal.