Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Dictionary of Differences

Today was good :) Started out a little rocky with the bus to our orientation being super late, but after that it was pretty smooth. Orientation this morning was boring, they talked to us about banking with the Disney bank, Partners, and what we can and cant do with our work visa (to prevent deportataion). That presentation was pretty cool, themed to Toy Story with us as the Aliens... haha. And then we had lots of paperwork-- Interrupted by falling asleep on apt 2402's (angelica, sam, giuli, gemma's apt) couch.

It's now thursday, but I'm gunna try to expand this entry...

Tuesday:

The paper work at our morning orientation was mostly to do with homeland security and our status in the country. We then had a presentation by Partners! The bank exclusively for disney cast members and their families. After that, we got back on another late bus, and headed back to vista way for a little break. At 2 ish we had another session, this one was here at the Vista Way clubhouse, and was one of the walk around and go to certain stations. At this session, most people found out their placements-- Angelica is a custodian at The Studios, Giuli is Food and Beverage at the Grand Floridian Resort, Sam is a Lifegaurd at Pop Century resort, Gemma is Food and Bev on Main Street of the Magic Kingdom, Alex is Lifegaurding at The Beach Club resort, Fanny is F&B at All Stars Resort ... and thats all I can think of off the top of my head... Me though, i just found out, again, that I have an audition thursday afternoon. Most people start their training on thursday, but apparently i start at 6:15 am friday morning... or thats the rumor anyways.
So after we got our assignments, we got out main gate passes, the little card that lets us let up to three people into the park on 6 days. Then we walked from the clubhouse to building 26 to have a class on filling out the tax form and we signed our life away in the form of confidentiality agreements and release of idea forms, which basically means that any ideas, suggestions or thoughts we say at work belong to the disney company :P.

So then we went back to the apartment, and waited for angelica to come home so we could go to Walmart. And waited. And started the Distionary of Differences, for all the words and phrases we say that are different from each other. And waited. And thought, this isnt like her, but we didnt have a way to contact her, so eventually we just left, leaving her a note to call us when she got in.

We took the bus to Walmart, chatting with this guy from Haiti, which was cool, and right after we got inside the supercentre, we got a call from angie- poor girl had gotten lost on the way back from visiting her parents and ended up on the turnpike to tampa bay, then the security people at our complex wouldnt let her park the car they had previous said she could park for the week. Needless to say she was upset. eventually she got through, but the 10 minute trip home had taken almost 2 hours. So she didnt come to walmart, and we bought cookie dough to make her feel better, and the blouse she needed for traditions.

We somehow managed to spend 3 hours in walmart, i got shoes for my audition, a mattress cover, some food, an alarm clock... and we decided to make a big dinner, the girls from the uk wanted us to try curry so we had curry chicken and rice. They were shocked that we had never had indian food before, and even more surprised at how small the oriental foods section of walmart was. They were so cute when they got to the english food section, i thought they would buy everything they liked the taste of home.

By the time we got home (in a taxi, we just missed the bus which is probably a good thing, getting all our junk onto the bus would have been hard...) it was 9 o clock, by the time we had dinner and made cookies it was even later. So we went for a swim and chatted a lot, and then I started this blog entry and apparently, at about 3 in the morning, we all fell asleep in the living room-- cuz we all woke up there the next morning. Me on the couch, cam on the floor, giuli on the armchair-- Ang and Gemma were smart enough to actually go to their beds...



Summary:
Orientation: Visa Info, Forms, Banking, work locations, tax forms, main gate passes, class thing in building 26

angelica gets lost, trip to walmart for three hours (!!) Chatting with ppl on the bus, missed bus, taxi, curry dinner, burnt cookies, chatting, swim, chatting, attempt at blogging, sleep.

Cockroaches and Elevators

Ok, so i've missed some stuff out of my last couple of entries, so this is an add in:

Elevators: On the way out of my nana's apt on sunday, we got stuck between floors because they shut down the elevators when an alarm went off. Needless to say, I kinda freaked and was sure I was gunna miss my flight :)

Cockroaches: So I saw a cockroach for the first time last night, not in my apartment thank goodness but we all kinda freaked and stood on chairs spraying it with lysol... were real girly girls apparently...

Vista Way: I never gave a real description of where I am living. Vista Way is an apartment complex that houses approx 2500 student workers- international and american. It's one of 4 similar complexes that altogether house some 9000 students. There are little buildings in a village sort of thing, with 6 apts in each building. I live on the third floor of my building, which is nice because our cieling goes up into a point, much higher than the other floors, and we have an extra semi-circle window on top of our picture window in the living room. I still haven't posted the video i made of our apt, but it'll be up here soon. We have three bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a big kitchen, living room, and it is all really spacious. My apt is right beside the pool and volleyball court, beside the clubhouse and not far from the bus stop. The busses run constantly and are coach busses exclusively for the use of cast members living in the complexes. The pool and hot tub are really nice, and weve already gone swimming 3 or 4 times.