Completion Celebration

Today marks three weeks until my departure date as well as the date of my graduation.

Graduation was held at Mickey's Retreat, which is just down the street across from Chatham Square.

Once you entered, you picked up your diploma as well as your Mickey Ears with a tassel. Then, there were carnival games set up such as rings on the bottles, knocking over the cans, bean bag toss, and a hole in one. Each booth had small prizes like keychains, posters, plastic megaphones, and notepads.

Then, you could have your picture taken with Donald, Chip & Dale, Goofy & Pluto, or Mickey & Minnie. Of course, Teresa and I made our way around to all of the above.
A DJ was set up in the middle of all the fun. Unfortunately the Cupid Shuffle, my all time favorite song, came on when I was stuck out on a lake, but we’ll get to that later. I was able to dance to the Cha Cha Slide.

Free food again! Lunch was provided – chicken wrap or BLT, fruit, chips, pasta, cookies, and sodas.

Then, Teresa and I signed up for paddle boat races. First place was a picture frame with the castles from each of the five parks around the world and second place was a snow white ceramic keepsake box. Teresa wanted to place second for that prize, but I wanted first place. So, after all was over, we did end up in first place, but the event workers were nice enough to let Teresa have the second place prize. Paddle boats are a bit of a workout – just a side note.

General Motors was even set up with some cars and brochures. They are usually in Test Track in Epcot, so Teresa knew the guys working the booth. We took our picture in the yellow camero and got some beads for signing up for something or other.

Once we’d hit all the spots of main interest, we headed home. But, it was a fun graduation. It’s a little hard to believe it’s already time to start thinking about packing up and heading home.

Random happenings in April

April always proves to be a busy month. Therefore, I have several small happenings that happened. Imagine that. But, somehow did not ever end up in a blog. So this is the post that catches us up to date.

At one point in time during the month of April, we randomly decided to go swimming at midnight. I thought it was fun, everyone else was freezing. Well, I admit that I was freezing too, but that’s besides the point. Kaitlyn, Betsy, Teresa, and I jumped in the pool for a cool swim. It was actually our first time in the pool all semester.

Later, in the month of April, I had lunch with a friend from high school, Chris. He is moving to Florida to attend college near Tampa. He was in town for the week scoping out the area and visiting campus so we met up for lunch. It was fun to hang out and compare how things have changed amongst our lives.

Then, a couple days later in the month of April, my favorite cousin Joshua and his little niece Ava came to visit. We went to Magic Kingdom for the afternoon. I realized that you get treated with much more priority when you have a small child with you. Ava was able to visit the Princesses. And we got ice cream later – the ultimate Dole Whip Pineapple Soft Serve.

Also, during the month of April, Teresa and I watched a movie called, Letters to God. I recommend it. I believe I mentioned it in the Give Kids the World(GKTW) post. It was sad, happy, and funny. But the boy in the movie, Tyler, had a medulloblastoma brain tumor which happens to be the same type of tumor my brother had years ago. Therefore, I found the movie relatable. Plus, most people can simply relate with the idea of knowing atleast one person who has had cancer.

I recently finished reading the book, “The Guardian,” by Nicholas Sparks. I recommend this as well. I had three days off this last week, and honestly sat on the couch from 10AM until I was finished with the book. I had some small breaks in that time, but did not want to put the book down.

This last Thursday, I volunteered again at GKTW. I felt like we were not used to our full potential, but I always enjoy being on property and helping. Tiffany, Micole, and I worked in Katie’s Kitchen, filling orders and delivering orders. We peaked next door in the Ice Cream Palace to see if Tim and Art were working from several weeks back and they were. It was neat to see them again.

After working in the Kitchen, the girls wanted Boston Market, which is what is served in Katie’s Kitchen. I had never had Boston Market so I was up for the adventure. Teresa and I also went for ice cream at Friendly’s tonight which is what they serve in the Ice Cream Palace. Yum. It is comparable to Braum’s at home… maybe even better than Braum’s.

I think that wraps up my catch up for random events in April.

Night of the Stars!

Every semester, one of the big events for CPs is Night of the Stars. It is very much a talent show. However, all the people have tried out previously and the participants have been narrowed down. This semester it was hosted at House of Blues in Downtown Disney.

The show was about two hours, but very well worth my time. There was a variety of entries from singing, dancing, readings, instrumentals, and so forth.

My two favorites of originals writings – a guy wrote his own song about Tomorrowland and another group, calling themselves, “The Disney Point,” performed to the tune of “Single Ladies” by Beyonce, however, it was a parody called “Single Riders.” It was rather hilarious.

The hosts of the show, David and Jennifer, were awesome too. I have had class with both of them. There was a lot of crowd interaction and the crowd won prizes throughout the night as well.

Plus, food and drinks were provided. These Disney people really know how to put on events for us college people. Free and entertaining, what else could you need?

Fun Day!

My work schedule came out and they randomly scheduled me off on a Friday and believe me, we took full advantage of it. As soon as Teresa and I realized this miracle, Teresa put her shift up for grabs and before we knew it, we were headed to the Tampa area again for a day packed full of fun.

We started out at Busch Gardens(BG). Rollercoasters = Ah-mazing. While we hit all the major coasters and visited a few animals, our last stop was the best. Our pre-lunch was a huge banana split. First of all, because Teresa had never had a banana split before so we had to fix that and second of all, because there was a special to get five scoops of ice cream instead of three and extra toppings for just a dollar more. Let me tell you, this treat was delicious.

After our time at BG, we headed out for the beach. We decided to sample some gulf coast of Florida and headed for Treasure Island. But, first we found lunch at a local buffet place. It was sketchy at first, but once we got inside and got plates, we decided it was decent food.

We took a seven mile bridge out to Treasure Island. Humorously, there was a sign “Long Bridge Ahead, Check Gas.” Teresa and I wondered how many people ran out of gas on the bridge that they had to put that sign up.

Treasure Island was beautiful and I much prefer it over Cocoa Beach. AND! I did not get sunburnt! Yippee!

After the beach, we drove back to the Orlando area and grabbed dinner at The Rainforest Café in Downtown Disney. Then, we watched a movie, Date Night.

It was a full day. Plus, once we got home, we still had to wash out the tie dye we did the day before. 7AM – 2AM is a long day. But, well worth it.

Tie-Dye

Well, we all knew it was coming eventually. Traveling Tie Dye has to tie dye some t-shirts at one point in her journey.

Teresa and I have been saving up shirts since we started the program. I had a white blood donor shirt, white skydiving shirt, and white Disney college program shirt. Do we see a trend of the word, “white?” Well as of last week, they are no longer white!

I love being crafty so it was a good afternoon. I have only tie dyed once before this occasion since my obsession with tie dye began. Yes, I believe it might be an obsession, but on some scale, it’s not my fault. People just keep buying me tie dyed things.

Last summer for my demonstration speech in speech class, I did “How to Tie Dye.” And the night before the speech was full of tie dying with Leslie. It was a fun adventure and I got some cool shirts out of it.

Last week was even more successful; I love experimenting. For small details, we did a couple swirls, bulls eye, crumple, and a folded one. I bet that last sentence makes no sense, but it’s variations of tie dye. The thing I love most about tie dye is that you will never have the same results. Different folds and different colors will always result in a new surprise.

However, the most important thing about tie dye is to have no expectations. If you want it to turn out a specific way, it most likely will not so it’s best to just not have expectations when you start. Teresa struggled with this idea. She might even be a bit of a perfectionist.

Oh yes, I might add that we attempted and conquered the Mickey head as well!

Enjoy the pictures!

Disney University

Well, I wanted to fill you in on my Disney classes and what’s been happening in them. I have two courses – Marketing You and Leadership Exploration Series.

Marketing You is all about, who, me! Each week I have class for four hours and we cover different topics. We had a Dream Job Strategy week discussing what we wanted to be when we were little and what we are studying now in school. Later, we covered transferable skills and our personal development.

For homework, we did a career interest inventory where it asked a million questions about what we like/dislike and then gave us a report of what type of things we would work well with. Then, we did a “30 second commercial,” which is basically learning how to formally introduce yourself to people. We also had to order personal business cards. We wrote a paper with three achievements on the college program and I attended an alumni speaker series with people in the field of communications for networking. I also had a formal interview with one of my managers discussing how he got to where he is, why he likes it, and all that jazz.

Just today we turned in a cover letter, resume, and reference page. Next week will be our professionalism paper basically wrapping up all the assignments into a five page paper of what we’ve learned and discovered throughout the semester. Finally, our last week is presentation week, where we present about a job we are interested in. It will be set up like a science/job fair. I chose to research a Computer Programmer so we’ll see how that goes!

My Leadership Exploration Series is a bit different. There is no homework for the course. It has not quite been what I expected, but it is interesting. We only meet for 2 hours each week and so far it has been lecture stuff about leadership within the company. I guess my impression was that we would meet more leaders and hear from them, but we’ve only had one guest speaker so far. I’m pretty jealous that Teresa’s Heritage Class met Meg Crofton, President of the Walt Disney World® Resort.

I am constantly learning more and more about the company and the people within it. I think it’s really neat that everyone has a story of how they ended up at Disney and why they chose to stay. I am really interested in coming back out to Florida for a Professional Internship within Management or IT once I graduate.

There are days that I regret taking online classes because it can be a lot to keep up with between working 35-40 hours a week, attending the two mentioned classes, keeping up with dishes, laundry, and roomies, and enjoying the Florida area. But, the pros always outweigh the cons, because I would have lost my Presidential Scholarship and what not if I had not stayed full time. I have two online classes – Microeconomics and Statistics, two arranged classes – humanities and business communications, and then my two Disney classes. Whew.

Enough about class work, I need to go enjoy the rest of my day off at Epcot with Betsy!

Give Kids The World

Give Kids The World (GKTW) Village is a 70-acre, non-profit resort in Central Florida that creates magical memories for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. It is located about twenty minutes from my apartment.

In 1986, Henry Landwirth was the manager of a hotel in the area when he was contacted to compensate a hotel room to make a child’s wish come true to visit Walt Disney World (WDW). Unfortunately, during the process of making arrangements, Amy, the ill child, passed away and Henry was contacted to be notified that they would no longer be coming to Florida.

This situation inspired Henry to found GKTW so that every child with a life-threatening illness with the wish to come to WDW could make it here before passing on. Time is the one thing these children do not have. It wasn’t until 1989 that the actual village opened up, but the village is something else.
The village had 140 villas for families to stay in for one week. GKTW partners with 250 wish foundations from across the world to bring children to central Florida. Just a month or so ago, GKTW welcomed their 1,000,000 family. People have visited from all 50 states and over 70 countries.

If a child’s wish is to come to central Florida, GKTW can have them here in 48 hours – cost free to the family. The resort has everything from food places like the Gingerbread house, Katie’s Kitchen, and the Ice Cream Palace to mini golf, arcade, swimming pool, fishing pond and a movie theater. The families have access to anything in the area that they wish to go to – Walt Disney World, Seaworld, Universal, Gatorland, Kennedy Space Center – any attraction in the area. Again, families enjoy this week long adventure cost free – what an amazing blessing.

A good video with the story and tour of the area:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo1haStdWuQ
Or visit their website: www.gktw.org

It is such a fascinating place. I share this with you because I volunteered at GKTW two weeks ago with my group from work. But, last Saturday, I attended orientation so that I may volunteer on my own. When I went with my work group, I worked in the Ice Cream Palace and Katie’s Kitchen. Now that I have completed orientation, I can go back at anytime and work a variety of shifts. I’m looking forward to volunteering there more before my program ends in May.

Give Kids The World is also featured in a movie that was just released April 9 called Letters to God. It’s based on a true story of a boy with cancer writing letters to God during his illness. The boy the movie is based on actually spent a week at GKTW and his star is on the ceiling of the castle (if you watched the youtube video, you understand the stars). Also, the co-star, Bailey Madison was on property the night I volunteered and she actually came into the Ice Cream Palace and served ice cream. She is a sweetheart.

I hope you enjoyed learning about this small piece of heaven for children with life-threatening illnesses. I had never heard of it until I moved down here, so I wanted to share!

Shuttle Launch & Cocoa Beach

Discovery STS-131 headed for the Space Station on April 5, 2010 at 6:21AM. Five of us made the trek to the Kennedy Space Center to see such a sight. Originally, the launch was supposed to take place in mid-March when my family was due to visit, but for some reason or another AFTER we purchased tickets, the date was changed. I love their disclaimer, “Launching humans into space is a very complex business and dates can be changed at any time for thousands of reasons.” However, no refunds so I finally found people to purchase the tickets from me and come along for the adventure.

I was off work at 11:30PM, so I headed home and prepared to leave. We headed out around 2AM because we had to arrive at the space center by 4AM. Then, I napped until 5:45, grabbed some hot chocolate and watched Discovery launch. I honestly was not as impressed with this launch – maybe because of our location/viewing, maybe because of the time of day – the sun was starting to rise – or maybe just because the first one I experienced in February was the cherry on the ice cream.

By the time people cleared out, it was close to 7AM and Teresa was ready to explore. We stayed at the space center until noon. We watched some clips on the Hubble Telescope on IMAX screen. It was neat, but we’d be awake all night, so several of us dosed off…

We took the tour out to see the Saturn Rocket that took crews to the moon. Overall, it was a really neat place. A big mind opener for how much bigger this place is outside of Earth. The Earth as a whole is like a grain of sand; it’s amazing.

After the space center and souvenir shopping, Teresa, Erin, and I headed to Cocoa Beach. We made a pit stop at the skydiving place to pick up my long lost hoodie. The beach was crazy busy, but we found a spot and sorta passed out. Don’t forget, we had all been awake a while now working full shifts the previous day. I would like to mention that I did apply sunscreen to myself, but later that evening when we returned home, it was noted that my sunscreen was not effective as I was as red as a lobster. Now, a week later, I am healed of my sunburn and done peeling. Yipee!

I very much enjoyed my time at the beach. I think it’s really neat to look out for miles and miles and it’s just water. The ocean looks so huge, but then I remember the space center and how tiny we really are. It’s a hard concept to wrap your brain around.