Halloween Party... Sort of

I can't tell you how much fear runs through my body when I get the hiccups between guests on my ride.  Seriously.  I think about how embarrassing it would be to have the hiccups on the ride and the sheer fear of that gets rid of my hiccups.  Thank goodness!

This is me at my friend's Halloween Party Saturday night.  The girls crammed on the couch for this.  I wasn't planning on dressing up at all, but the day of my friend Kaunnalli (sitting next to me in this pic) texted me telling me that Austin reeeeeally wanted everyone to dress up.  It was his party.  She texted this to me the day of while I was at work.  And I had nothing.

So I went as a Disney tourist.  I had the big camera around my neck too, but said camera was used in taking this photo sooo... yeah.  I planned on sunglasses but forgot them.  Lamest costume ever, I know.  But I bet you'll never guess who the girl on the right is.  Some chick from X-Men?  Something like that.

Anyway, Austin did a really good job and it was a fun party.  It was extremely hard to get pictures because the lighting was so dark and there were black lights everywhere.  The only way to get a decent picture was to use flash, but that lit up the whole room and was kind of annoying.  So I refrained and most of my pictures ended up like this:

Good times!

Just Dance

I just wanted to see if this would actually work...

Natalie got this new dance game in the mail today and we tried it out for FHE. Yes, I tried it too... just not in this video.

Chocolate, Chocolate, and a Little More Chocolate!

Our Bountiful Basket this week. I really don't know that it's "excess of farmers in the area." That's why I wrote "or something" at the end of that sentence. All I really know about it is it's run by farmers and I thought it had something to do with "excess." I don't know though... they're obviously not super duper fresh. Anyway, here's a picture. :)



And now for our chocolate-fest! We decided (okay, Natalie decided) that for Valentine's Day (slash Monica and Stanzie's birthdays since they both had birthdays yesterday) that we would have a chocolate party! Everyone had to make a chocolate dish (Ashley made two) for the apartment to share.

We also made guacamole, salsa, and chips for our "appetizer" for dinner. Then Natalie made some of the best chicken enchiladas ever for dinner.



And by "some" I mean TONS! We didn't even make it through one of these pans. We're going to be eating a LOT of enchiladas over the next few days...



Then the chocolate-fest began! Monica wasn't here (she went to Missouri-ish this weekend) so Cami came instead. Cami is friends with Teresa and Natalie from work, but we also happen to have the same class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I kind of knew her too... kind of.

This is Cami, Teresa, and Ashley enjoying the chips and homemade dip!



Ashley making her super rich truffles!



Natalie, putting her finishing touches on her chocolate cheesecake! Sort of...



I say sort of because someone kind of ate a piece before it was time... and that same someone filled it in with whipped cream to "cover it up." Smooth, Natalie, very smooth.



We fed that piece to Teresa later...



Stanzie made the salsa and the "Brigadero." I think that's what it was called...





Teresa made cherry hot chocolate. And I made the carmelitas (the ones being passed around in this pic)! Ashley's second thing was the trifle (the one with chocolate chips on top).



So after stuffing myself of guacamole and enchiladas, this is my dessert plate! Sooooo yummy!



Cami with the desserts. Taking Monica's place. Okay, so actually this picture is to show you a better photo of my carmelitas. Don't they look delicious!?



And just to be sure there's pictures of all of my roommates in this post, here is one of Natalie, Ashley, and Monica.

Graduation Today

The obligatory photos:

Better Than Nothing...

You guessed right!

They haven't released the actual picture yet. I got this from watching the school news channel and using print screen (and everyone isn't in the correct places yet here anyway, you can see all the holes).

They're going to blow the picture they took up to 25 feet by 20 feet and put it in the Crossroads which is the school dining area. It'll be huge! Unfortunately, it won't happen for another eight weeks and I'll be gone then. But I'll definitely put up a real picture someday. Me, Kiara and Jake were in the bottom left crook (I was literally right exactly in the corner on the outside) of the I as pointed out here.



Can't you see me down there? :)

The B was the hardest one. They kept having to correct the people in the B, telling them to squish together more and stop moving. The dash and the I were the two easiest letters. It was definitely very fun and very worth the hour and a half of my time!

Lunch With the President

I ate lunch with Pres Clark today. The food was incredible. The first course was a small salad with vinaigrette dressing and fruits and spinach and stuff. Then our main course was this weird kind of rice (none of us knew the name of it but we'd all seen it before... it's like super fat rice), squash and zucchini, and this chicken stuffed with asparagus and some sort of cheese. Dessert was this amazing three layer white cake with strawberry something in between each layer and topped with cream cheese frosting and whipped cream. Amazing.

Of course the company was unbelievable too. I got there a couple of minutes early and they had all of us students sit in this room and chat for a while. There were about ten of us. Fortunately after I got there I found this guy Shawn. He was in my Spanish class last semester so we already knew each other so we kind of stuck together. After chatting and getting to know each other in the first room we all moved over into the "dining" room. The table was in a big octagon shape so everyone could see each other. To my left was this girl Lindsey. To her left was Sis. Clark and to her left was President Clark. We all had assigned seats.

We talked about a lot of stuff. It was really fun. I don't really want to go into the details of what we talked about, but if you're really dying of curiosity you can ask me. I talked to Pres. Clark a bit. More to his wife actually. They are all such incredible people it just totally blows my mind. I'm so grateful that I get to go to this school! And I'm especially glad that our president does things like this. It's such a good idea!

I got to sit on the stand at devotional. It was really cool looking at the auditorium from there and reading the teleprompter along with the speaker. All over a really cool experience. I'm grateful to have been picked for it!

Note To Self:

Never ever ever under any circumstances ever never ever live in Idaho after graduation.

I'm sunburned. From being outside for twenty minutes. In Idaho. This is not acceptable. Especially since I lived in Florida and it took like three times as much exposure to the sun for me to get a burn.

Stupid sunburn.

Stupid Idaho.

I took this picture of my legs wishing they weren't so white.



Twenty minutes later I got my wish. They're now red.

On a happier note I had a fantastic weekend. Apart from passing Bliss,




spending it in Boise,




watching* a friend graduate with a bagpipe band,



and hanging out with another friend which was a total adventure, my sister is married and graduated! That's a lot to take in in just one weekend. But it's awesome. I freakin' love my family!

Now I'm back home and back to my typical college life. But maybe I'll be more motivated to work now. Considering the past few weeks I've been super lazy. I practically bombed a test Friday. Okay, well I don't actually know what I got but I'm pretty sure it wasn't good.

But I woke up at 6:30 this morning to go to the gym with Ashley. My arms are no longer sore from lifting weights. But then again, I went all weekend without it so we'll see...

We decorated cakes for FHE tonight. It was so much fun.



It was Maddie's birthday. We split into three groups and we each had a cake with three color frostings that my roommate Jeanette made. Daisy went to the dollar store and bought tons of random crap to put on the cakes. It was awesome.



The one with the glow stick rainbow and the Army men belonged to my group. And ours won! We let Maddie choose her favorite. Honestly in my opinion, the other two were both better than ours. But ours was cleaner looking.





I liked the one with the salamanders coming out the sides, personally. It was fun though and tasted delicious (after we took all the plastic off). Glad I didn't choose to sleep through it, but really, I'm going to bed now.

*So there were like 1,100 graduates at that thing. So Kelly and I stayed to watch Jalene walk across the stage. Then we went outside and sat on the grass (insert sunburn picture) and watched YouTube videos on my new ITouch for the remainder of the graduation. It's kind of cheating, but really, who enjoys watching strangers walk across a stage for a blue folder?

Classes

My Spanish teacher reminds me of Dr. House. It's going to be an interesting semester...

After having an awesome spastic noisy mini prank war with my roommates (old and new) last night, I officially decided to drop my Group Dynamics (ironic?) course and take it easy for the next three semesters to graduate next summer instead of cramming tons in and stressing (even though I like stress, it keeps me busy).

I have awesome roommates this semester! Just thought I'd add that.

My Astronomy course is going to kill me. I just realized it today. I can tell it would be a thousand times easier in a class but since they don't offer it as a lecture course except in the Fall when I'm off-track I don't really have an option. It's fun and interesting but some of it just makes no sense. Hopefully I'll find a study buddy soon.

The rest of my classes seem fine. I have the same teacher for two classes. Everyone I know who's had her before say "she's a hippie... you'll understand what I mean by the end of the semester, I promise." Hopefully this'll turn out to be a good thing. Her syllabus is difficult to read because the course calendar is like nine pages long because she included tons of graphics and pictures and color coded every page. We found out in class today that she had a different book than we (the students) did. This would be why the reading assignment she gave us didn't correspond with the book at all. I feel bad for her because the only solution she could come up with, instead of having us all buy new books, was that she would redo the entire course schedule and syllabus.

Yeah, I feel bad for her. Especially since it was the bookstore's fault.

Anyway, there's a little update. Not much else to say.

Disney Party!!

I was invited to a party tonight for people who were involved with Disney on campus. That's me! At first I almost didn't want to go because I doubted there were really a lot of students on this campus who worked in Disney World. But actually, there was a good thirty people there! It was great!

They had a Q&A session which was good for me because even though I've done the program before I still learned some things. Like the fact that while it doesn't count as an internship credit, it could count as a practicum credit for me. And I can be a campus rep next year and make money!

Most of it was a simple "mix and mingle" kind of deal. I had a nice conversation with this guy Denis who is going to be in Merchandise and when he heard that's where I worked he had a bunch of questions for me. I loved answering questions from people. It made me feel knowledgeable. But he asked one that I had a lot of trouble answering. He asked me, "What was the biggest thing you learned going down there?"

This was hard. If it were a college paper I could easily BS ten things that I "learned."

"Well, I learned a lot about how important diversity is. I learned how to provide magical moments for guests. I took a people management class and learned about managing people at Disney World. I learned to appreciate my superiors. Blah blah blah."

But this guy was seriously genuinely wanting to know if this was an experience where he could expect his life to be changed not only because of the fun he'd have, but because of how he'd learn and grow. It's harder for him to do the program because he's from Hong Kong, China. It's going to actually cost him money because he's an international student. So, what was the biggest thing I learned at Disney World?

I learned a ton of things. But the biggest would have to be that I got to not only learn, but see and experience how a Fortune 100 company runs from the inside out. I watched the organization of the company and how they kept up with checks and balances systems and did guest recovery and enforced their values that they as a company were trying to portray. I observed my managers and determined what worked with them and found what didn't work for some of them. I learned how important respect is within an organization and how respect ties everyone together. Respect for each other regardless of race or even personal issues is vital to running a smooth company and I learned how quickly people can (and maybe should) be booted out for a lack of respect whether it was for themselves or others.

Anyway, I won't stay on my soap box too long, but his question really got me thinking a lot. The party as a whole was fun. I'm super glad I went. And now I have loads of new thoughts and feelings running through my head.

The problem? I still have one exam left.

FHE Fire!

We had an awesome activity for FHE tonight. Kudos to whoever's idea it was. It was one of our sisters in another apartment.

Anyway, you start with several copies of The Scroll (school newspaper). And a few cigarette lighters. Catch the scroll on fire. Eat a mouthful of powdered sugar....



And then blow as hard as you can directly at the fire. It looks awesome in real life.



It's super hard to capture good pictures. I didn't take any, these were all taken by our FHE bros and I just stole them off of facebook.



Unfortunately, they didn't get a very good one of me. I did it three times. You have to blow quickly before your saliva and spit make the sugar too wet. I think I kind of spat it one of the times. Lame. This time actually looked cool, but they caught the picture just after the "explosion."



We even had people looking out their windows from other apartments to watch us. So cool. This is definitely something I'm gonna keep in mind for fun ways to hurt myself in the future!

Guitars Unplugged

I really wasn't planning on going tonight. Well I was, sort of.

Guitars Unplugged is a yearly/semesterly (not sure which) event. Basically, they get all the students in the school who are stinkin' awesome at playing guitar or have a band and said bands get to play on stage.

You have to pay to go see it. I had an FHE brother who was in it one year. He was inCREdible at guitar. No seriously, he could have been the best one up there. Tonight, I saw a kid from one of my classes who played. He was super duper amazing too. Sometimes it amazes me how talented some of the people at our school are.



Well, I've been to Guitars Unplugged before. I wasn't really planning on going tonight either. I didn't have friends who were going. I just went to hand out bracelets for our Student Safety Committee. People actually collect those silly rubbery bracelets people hand out all the time. I had people coming up to me asking for them and more for their friends. Funny...

Because I handed out bracelets they stamped my hand. So I got in for free. Something I was totally not expecting. So I stayed. For a little while. One of the guys got up to introduce his band.

"Hey there! We were going to dedicate this song to a special someone tonight.... but decided that might be too risky! So instead I'm dedicating it to all you people out there screaming!" And he began to play.

Guitars Unplugged is pretty cool with their effects. They had the lights and the smoke and the lasers. Partway through the song these white lights started going off all around the gym. "That's a cool effect. I didn't know we had that in our gym!"

Then I heard a noise. Sounded sort of like a buzzer, right in time with the music. "Wow, the buzzer and the lights go off together nicely. With the music. Nice! I didn't know they had such awesome effects."

And then I heard this woman in a formal looking outfit come through saying something about fire alarms in a panicked voice.

"Oh. Crap."

It took like two minutes for people to realize it was the fire alarms. All the lights and stereo equipment up front suddenly shut off. People were screaming, "KEEP PLAYING! SCREW THE ALARMS! KEEP PLAYING!!!!"

And then the loudspeaker system came on. "The fire alarms have gone off. We need to calmly evacuate the building. If everyone could calmly make their way to the nearest exit and--" Yeah, I didn't even hear the rest of that statement. When there's five thousand people in already energetic moods in one gigantic room with fire alarms going off, the word "calm" isn't even an option.

People weren't really freaking out or anything. No running or anything. We just all walked slowly out of the building saying to each other, "Well that sucks! Ruined a perfectly good song." But it was loud. Opposite of calm.

I have to say, I myself thought it may have been that "special someone" that the boys decided not to risk dedicating their song to tonight who pulled the alarm.

But it wasn't. Too much smoke got caught in some pipe. Five minutes later we were all back in our seats, excited as ever to continue the show. And the show went on.

And all was well with the world. The End.

Last Week of Disney

These are pretty random because it's hard to put pics up on blogger. But all of these pictures were taken pretty much from Christmas Eve on. Fun times!

Driving home from church one day the traffic was totally unbelievable. Around Christmas in Orlando it's ridiculous. So after we were stopped on the road for a few minutes I thought, "Hey, as long as I'm in park and no one's moving... why not save a memory?"



I held an alligator. Not this one. But one exactly like it named Popeye. I never put the story up here... but it was freakin' AWESOME!!!



It's awesome at night after all the guests are gone, but the water show goes on always. So I get to stand there in the solitude watching the show and hearing the music blast! It's so cool! Well, I mean not total solitude, but it's pretty close!



Our cute little tree with our stockings. No chimney. But I'd say we decorated pretty darn well! The stockings were hung a little weird cuz my friends were freaked out we'd get in trouble if we poked holes in the walls. So they only used pre-existing holes. So funny!



I memorized every single country's flag!



As I left work that night (New Years morning... around 2am) I went to catch the bus home.



Check out this line!!! Here you see busses one and two. I was on the fourth one. It was insane! You can see the hats they gave us and we also got free food! It was a fantastic last night!





Kelly and I in the Land. We took a picture of ourselves...



And then we realized we were both wearing the same shirt! Dang, great minds think alike!



Me, Jean and Alyssa. Our.. well... at least my... final night at Image!



Me, Jean, Alyssa, and Marina. As we were walking across the park Jean was really into taking photos and for some we used my camera. I think it's so cute how Jean got Alyssa to do the peace sign. I think she thinks we think (follow that?) that's super cool or something. So funny! All the Asian kids do that in their photos. Jeans doing it in the previous one.



Me, Jean and Alyssa. In case you're wondering why Marina kept getting left out it's because she was one of the new kids who we still didn't know very well. We hadn't really bonded with her (although I think she's awesome! The more I got to know her the more I liked her) and she just offered to take the pictures. I felt bad so I made her be in the one before this one.



I drew this pic of Donald Duck!! I did!!! Really! And I was really excited about it too, until I looked at the 8 year old girl sitting next to me who totally showed me up. Lame....



Ahhh EPCOT. How I love you!!



The Living Seas. One of my three places in my location. Actually, I guess it's "The Seas with Nemo and Friends" now. This is the entrance to the ride. I only worked in the shop.



Kelly and I took pictures in the aquarium. It is so beautiful. I love it!






The Land. Another of my locations.



We put these signs up. People would come up to us, "Are you really out of tickets? What about us. We really wanted to go on this ride! It'll totally ruin our whole vacation if we don't get fastpasses." Yeah, sorry. You can still go on the ride. But in this case it was a three hours wait. Yeah, popular.



Figment. My main area of expertise. If you could call it that.



I found him.



My 3D glasses in Honey I Shrunk the Audience.





Kelly at work in HS with her light saber. You SELL that thing girl!!



Spectacle of the Dancing lights in Hollywood Studios Christmas Eve. This show is awesome. And you can wear 3D glasses that are supposed to make it better (we didn't really see a huge difference but... ya know...)



Kelly and Lis



My room. Day of packing, packing and more packing. Glad my roommate was gone.



My friend thought it would be cool to get a shot of me throwing my hat up in front of the castle. Except it was night. And this was the best shot we ended up with. When we got it, we had already been trying for so long we just said, "Eh, good enough." and gave up. Still, it works okay. You can kind o f see the hat barely in the frame on top.



On the plane ride back to Idaho I figured this little thing out. Here's how it's supposed to start (getting it into start position is hard enough!)



And pretty much two steps later you're here and ready for the final step.



Yep. Only three steps pretty much to solve. Lame right? It's actually really fun to play with though!