No more training!

I don't know why I complained about working in the pizza and pasta section. Burger was so much worse, even though it wasn't that bad. I look back and think that everywhere really isn't that bad, and that I was just frustrated because I didn't know what I was doing. Haha. After two days of working in burger, my hands were literally a different color than the rest of my body because they were burnt from keeping my hands under the burners for 8 hours each day. Working in burger is easy, but it is SO HOT. I was dripping sweat- it was nasty gross DISGUSTING. After burger I trained in the morning in the specialty section, which had parfaits and oatmeal for breakfast and then salads and sandwiches for lunch. Not being a morning person, I definitely didn't like waking up to get to my 7am shift. I guess I didn't like the burger and sandwich parts of the shops because you have to turn around and ask the culinary for the item you need. It takes too much time and can get confusing. I like the shops that I can just get what I need myself. Anyway, yesterday in specialty was the busiest day I've had at work so far. I made parfait after parfait for a group of Brazilian kids (they all wanted the same kind of parfait, so it wasn't too bad). But then at lunch, the salad line was basically across the room, and making a salad when the guest gets to choose their own toppings takes a little time! My hand started cramping up!! Tonight I get to work a night shift again so I'm happy about that. This is the first time going into work where I don't know what section of the food court I'll be working in, because I'm officially done with training! YAY! After my shift yesterday I had to sit down with one of the trainers and take my test so that I could officially be.. a normal cast member? Haha I don't know. I think I'm going to leave my "Earning My Ears" ribbon on my name tag for a couple more days. It's my security blanket!

Bakery and Pizza

I will admit I kind of forgot about this blog for a couple of days. I've just been SO BUSY. I go to work at night, sleep in, eat, then do it all over again. One of these days that I didn't write, I went to Animal Kingdom with some roomies. It was deathly hot. We got pictures with Goofy, Minnie, Mickey, and Pocahontas!


After training in the dining room, I trained in the bakery. It was so much fun and not too much work. There are two sides of the bakery: the baked goods side and the ice cream side. Basically the whole first day I stayed on the baked goods side, handing out cookies and cake. Easy!!! I also made a cappuccino, but all you do is press a button and it goes by itself. The second day I scooped ice cream and made milkshakes the whole time. At first I didn't like making milkshakes because it takes so long and you have you move it around on this machine that sounds like a dentist's drill. But now I'm pretty much the best milkshake maker in Disney. We had to make sundaes too, which was my favorite. I did, however, cut my finger on the side of an ice cream container. FAIL. A guest saw me because I made the ice cream that I was scooping hop to a different container. She laughed really hard. It wasn't funny. Thats the one thing I didn't like about scooping ice cream- the guests sit there and watch you. I'm short so basically my whole upper body is in the ice cream cooler scooping this stuff, on my tip toes, arm shaking because the chocolate ice cream is like a rock- and EVERYONE wants chocolate.


Two days in bakery and then I get moved to pizza and pasta. Maybe it's because my stomach hurt. Maybe it's because I just really didn't want to work. Maybe it's because I liked bakery so much. But I really didn't like pizza. At all. I started out in pasta, and it was easy once you got the hang of it. You had to write on a box what sauce they wanted, then what pasta they wanted, then chicken or shrimp, then their number, then put all of the mix-ins they wanted in the box. And each section I just mentioned had its own section on the box where I had to write it (that was the hard part- remembering where to write it). So.. thats pretty much it for pasta. Pizza- ahhhhhhhh. You have to put pizza in the oven. Take the pizza out of the oven. Cut the pizza. If someone orders a large pizza, you give them a pager and when its ready, you have to page them and give them plates. You have to remember how to cut kids, individual, and large pizzas. You have to remember what's on the dining plan, what comes as a snack, what comes with a breadstick, that kids meals get two sides. You have to remember that in the craziness of all the pizza to call out the pasta numbers and put cheese and a breadstick with it. You have to put in fresh breadsticks and baked ziti. Towards the end of the night, everyone wants their orders to go, so you have to put to-go lids on everyone's pizza and pasta, and if you don't snap the lid on JUST RIGHT it takes forever to get it to snap on. It was tough work. The hardest part is remembering where everything is stored. There are two huge coolers, one freezer, and a bunch of little coolers everywhere, so someone will be like "It's in the cooler over there!" Which one?


Really looking forward to my days off on Wednesday and Thursday!!!!

Work.

Maybe I should have had a job before this, because this is killing me. I need to start stretching before I come to work because it literally takes a toll on every single one of my muscles. Like, my arms are hurting so bad today that I can barely lift my computer off of the table. Gosh I'm a wimp.


So the past two days I trained in the dining room. I cleaned tables, took out the trash, gathered trays, cleaned the beverage island, cleaned more tables, scooped ice out of the coke machines, helped close down both sides of the beverage island (which takes FOREVER), swept food off of the floor, answered a lot of guests questions that I didn't know, stocked forks, knives, and spoons, and cleaned more tables. It wasn't all boring, though. We got to do this thing called Jr. Chef, where we get little kids to come decorate cookies. And then a couple hours later we gather more kids to have a parade around the dining room, do the hokey pokey, and give them free mickey straws.


I will admit, the first day of training was tough. I was really stressed out and thought to myself, if I have to do this everyday, I don't think I can do it. But yesterday was SO much better. I didn't have my trainer with me all the time and I could do what I thought needed to be done. And everyone who was out on dining room duty helped each other out, which was great. Like the guys did garbage and let me clean tables instead. Sunday we missed the 12:25am bus and had to wait for the 1:00am bus, and then it took and hour to get home. No way am I ever waiting for the bus again. I drove last night and I am now driving every day to work.


I have today and tomorrow off. I couldn't be happier. I haven't had a single day to just chill since I've been here. I have been doing something every day, whether it's been unpacking, grocery shopping, online classes, Traditions, training...  And since I have a late shift, I never get to see any of my roommates :( I'm hoping since I have a couple days off that I'll get to hang out with them a little bit. I didn't really have pictures to put up, so I found some pictures of the Riverside Mill for you.

6 days?

Seriously, it's only been six days since I arrived here? It feels like I have been here for months. I am so close with my roommates already (thank you JESUS for giving me normal people!!) I swear they are the five sweetest girls on the planet. I love them all so much already!


Work the past couple of days has mostly consisted of online classes and my resort orientation. Did you know that you only had to be 18 to sell and serve alcohol in Florida? I'm excited about that, maybe because in Alabama you have to be 21 to basically do ANYTHING. Anyway, I am working at Port Orleans Riverside, which is a lot bigger than Port Orleans French Quarter. All of my training shifts are at night, from either 4pm-12:30am or 6:30pm-12:30am. It sucks because my roommates all have early shifts and I won't get to go hang out with them. At least I get to sleep in, right? My first day off since we've been here will be on Tuesday, and I get another on Wednesday.


I will be working in a food court type area, which has a pizza section, a burger section, a BAKERY section, etc. I hope you all could tell that the bakery is my favorite part :) My first day of training in my costume is today- I'm kind of nervous!

What I get to wear. Everyday.

Roomies & Traditions

I don't even know how to start off this post. I feel like the past couple of days have all been smushed together. My brain is fried and work hasn't even started yet. I guess I'll just go from the verrrrry beginning of all of this.

Marianne, Erica, Me, Monica, Brittany, & Natalia

My check-in date was on Monday, June 6th, so Mom, Dad, Caroline, Sloane and I left Athens Friday morning and drove the 12 hours it took to get to Orlando. We stayed at Bay Lake Tower at the Contemporary and then moved to the Boardwalk. I wasn't very nervous until Sunday night. I couldn't sleep at all, which sucked because we had to get up at 6 or so to get ready for me to go check in. Check-in wasn't until 9am, so I thought I was doing a good thing by getting there somewhat early (I aimed for 8am- I got there at 8:45am. Typical.) WRONG. I guess they started doing all the stuff way early or something because the line was ridiculously long and they were letting us go through. We had to park wherever we could and then walk to the pavilion, and I walked there with the girl named Brittany. Brittany and I were then in line with this other girl Monica. We talked as we stood in line and filled out papers. An hour passes and we are finally up to where we can pick our apartments. We all three decide hey, we should be roomies! And now we're living together for the next seven months. I'm also living with Marianne (who I'm sharing a room with), Natalia, and Erica. So that makes six of us ladies in a three bedroom, two bathroom apartment.

After we got our apartment in Vista Way, we got our picture taken for our apartment ID (which was a HUGE close-up picture of just your face- gross), and then got I got sent to casting. Casting took two hours, which would have been okay if I wasn't starving and about to pee in my pants. There I found out where I was working, which is at Disney's Port Orleans Resort in the food court. I just thought it is funny that out of all of the places I've been in Disney, I have never been there. Oh well. We turned in paperwork, got fingerprinted, went over the Disney look, got our traditions and training schedules, etc. After that I went to my apartment and unpacked and then went to Wal-Mart with some of the roomies.

Goofy! My favorite character!

Tuesday we had to attend a housing meeting at the Commons, which is another apartment complex but for international students only. I'm totally going to hang out there. Mmm. But anyway, the meeting was pretty boring. Two hours of just learning rules that I already knew. We went to Target after that and then I met the fam at their hotel and went to Hollywood Studios. It was so much fun and a great idea.. until I got back to the apartment at 11pm and didn't get to sleep until 12am.. and had to wake up at 5am to catch the bus at 6:45am for the 8am Traditions class!

My heel after Traditions. Pretty disgusting.

So today. Traditions. You watch a lot of videos that make you want to cry because you are so happy to be there, actually working for Disney, your dream job (or at least MY dream job!!!) You get your shiny new name tag and my cast ID. We got to go to the Magic Kingdom and walk around in the utilidors, which are the underground tunnels Disney uses to "keep the magic." But let me tell you, wear shoes you've worn before or wear band-aids on your feet because if you wear new shoes, your feet will die. I didn't have the right kind of shoes so I bought some flats last night. I didn't even think that 1. they would bother me, 2. we would be walking as much as we did, and 3. that my heels could bleed like that. Because my heels were bloody, my shoes were bloody, and by the time we got back on the bus to go home my feet were numb.

Our first time in MK as cast members!

After Traditions was over, Erica, Natalia, Marianne and I went to Chick-fil-a. It is within walking distance of my apartment, thank god, because I was really going to miss not eating it from the student center everyday. Then we met our friend Darrian and headed over to the Magic Kingdom for a couple hours. And guess what? We get in- FOR FREE! Whenever we want. Gosh, I'm going to love this. It's Erica's first time to Disney World so we made sure we got her a 1st Visit button, and all of us got We're Celebrating buttons to celebrate our first day as cast members! I start my first day of training tomorrow. Wish me luck!