I Swear I'm Not Blond

The cool thing about Disney is that they're good at illusions.  Things don't have to be real for them to be magical.  Something magical about my ride is how it gives the illusion that I'm very knowledgeable about animals... when in reality I simply memorize the three facts on the little card they give me with a picture of an elephant.

The other day this old woman in the front asked me about some random white and grey birds hanging out near the hippos (after I had told everyone about the pink-backed pelicans and the cormorants).  I turned off my mic, turned to look at her and told her straight up, "Actually... I'm sorry.  I honestly have no idea... I know nothing about those animals."  Then I realized I could probably pull this off entirely by telling the truth, "I know nothing about Floridian birds, I just know the birds here in Africa.  However, we do get a lot of foreign travelers here on the reserve."

The woman and her husband could not stop laughing, clearly expecting me to know everything and anything about all animals.  And quite honestly, I know very, very little about animals.  Very sad actually.

But that's not what this post is about.  As happy as I am to humor those guests who tell me at the end of my safari, "Thank you, you were very knowledgeable," I'm also the first one to tell you how completely not genius I am about many things.  In fact, sometimes I'm downright blonde.  Except that I'm a brunette.

The other day I was working prams and my friend was telling me a story about giraffes as I was trying to get the families with strollers out of the line so I could take their strollers and we could park them.  I told the guest, "Hello ma'am, I'll take your giraffe right here for you... I mean kid... I mean... the stroller.  Just the stroller, that's all I need."  In my defense, the stroller was orange.  The kid?  Well.. I don't have an excuse for that one.

But the real reason for this entire post is what happened today.  Again, at prams.  When I work Pram 1 position I get a radio.  I always clip the radio behind my back on my belt buckle.  That way it's out of the way as I deal with ten thousand strollers being shoved at me from various places.  So during pram today, I noticed a beeping sound, like a cell phone, coming from behind me.  I turned around to find nothing there but the tree.  After looking for a second, I ignored it and kept going.  A few seconds later the alert came again.  And again, I turned around in a circle, the noise continuously right behind me.  "Where is that coming from?"  I thought.

Finally the third time I turned around.  Enough guests had passed by that I was sure it wasn't a guest's phone, and we didn't have a phone at our location.  Just a.... radio.... ahhhh.  I actually realized it because Sean, who I happened to be working with, pointed it out to me just as I was thinking about it.  My coordinator was trying to reach me by radio.

Then he told me he was purposely just watching me because it was funny to watch me "chase my tail."  Possibly the most embarrassing thing ever.  You're welcome!

Stupid Cold

When I worked in Florida, they didn't like to tell us the exact numbers of how many people were in the park. But because I worked parades, we had to have at least a bit of an estimate. So one of my coordinators had a meter that she would base her idea of how many people were in the park.

The lowest end of this meter was just "Busy." Halfway up the meter would be "Stupid Busy." And the most busy we had was "Omigosh-Why-Am-I-Here Busy." Usually we were just "stupid busy" with occasional bouts of "ohmigosh-why-am-I-here busy" days in there.

Well, I can't help but use that same meter to determine how cold it is outside here in Idaho.

Forget numbers... it is stupid cold today. And I'm sick of it.

Silly People

For the record, if you're trying to list all seven dwarfs, two of them are NOT, I repeat NOT, named Duck and Angry.

That would be Doc and Grumpy. And yes, some guests today called them Duck and Angry during the parade and I would have corrected them but I think I already made them mad by telling them they couldn't stand in my crosswalk.

While I was on turnstile exits today these two older women approached me with their park tickets out and ready to go. They walked up to the turnstile and then looked around, confused as to where they needed to put their ticket in. I walked over to them and let them know they didn't need their cards to exit the park.

They looked confused. "Well then how are we supposed to exit?"

"You just walk right through the turnstile here."

"Through here? I just walk?" The one woman asked me, doubtingly.

"Yep. Just walk right through."

She walked up to it and put her hand on the turnstile and pushed a little. As it gave she slowly moved forward looking back at her friend.

"I just keep going, right?"

"Yes ma'am."

I was trying so hard not to laugh.

In other news I saw some awesome ads recently talking about plans for the new Downtown Disney area Hyperion Wharf. I can't believe all the incredible, nonstop expansions Disney comes up with! But what I'm most excited for is a new park! When is that gonna happen? My friends and I decided we need a Marvel theme park now that we bought them out last year. However, I doubt that will happen. But I do think we're gonna go further with the whole "superhero" theme. I'm so excited!!!

I can't wait to figure out my schedule! I have half a mind to just stay up all night until our new schedules come out! I want to know if I'm working December 3rd and 4th. Because something stinking exciting is happening and I will do just about ANYTHING to work those parade days!! I hope I work and I hope even more that I'm NOT working turnstile shifts! But we'll see.

Our managers warned us today that while we were busy tonight, this was nothing compared to what's coming. It worries me a little. But it'll be fine cuz I have tons of friends and less than a month and a half left. While I've enjoyed PAC, I'm definitely glad it's not something I'll be doing my whole life.

And I'm going to leave this here because I really do need to sleep. I know it's a weird abrupt end to a post but I've never been good at conclusions so this'll just have to do. The end.

Oh Spanish...

Today in Spanish we were split into groups and were supposed to be conjugating verbs and reading sentences aloud to each other. As I began a sentence I noticed the last word.

"marihuana"

I didn't know what it meant. I thought it sounded like a cute little girls name. You know like "Mariella" or "Marianna"

Nope. Marihuana is just like it sounds. Marijuana.

This is where I get my "naive" and "innocent" status from. Failure!

At least I got a few laughs.

Oh, and as a followup on my pirate post, you guys were right.

"Dead men tell no tales." Good job! :)

Pirates Trivia... Sort Of

When I worked at Disney we worked a lot with pins. One of the pins sets is a Pirates set (actually I think there are a lot of pirate sets) from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I can't remember if I wrote about it at the time, but each pin in this set had some sort of Chinese characters on it. I asked the Chinese people I worked with to translate for me.

One of the pins translated in English as "Pirates of the Caribbean" and another was "The Black Pearl." But there was one pin in the set that no one could really figure out the meaning of at the time.

I remember asking Jean. She couldn't think of a way to describe what it meant. "It's a Chinese saying." She would tell me. "It's complicated.

I asked Evan. He probably described it best of all the Chinese people I asked. He said, "It's hard to explain. But it means that if someone does a crime. And then they are killed.... then the secret goes with them." I still didn't get it. So he took my pen. "If I steal this pen. And then I die... I am the only person who knows that I took your pen though. There's no way for you to prove that it was I who took your pen. Yes? Okay. You get it."

I couldn't believe how just the two or three characters on a little pin could say all of that. I never got what the saying was in English. But then, a short time ago we were watching Pirates of the Caribbean and there was a line in that movie that made me realize the exact English translation of what my Chinese friends were trying to tell me. There is a short English saying that could be said in place of the description my Chinese friends gave me.

Can you figure out what it is? I'm gonna feel like an idiot if I'm the only one who had trouble making this connection. However, at the time it didn't even occur to me that we would have the same type of saying in English so I didn't really think about it.

I'll post the answer in my next post if no one gets it.

Lesson Learned

Don't eat five day old leftover meat with stale bread and expired sour cream. It's just not worth it no matter how poor you tell yourself you are.

Don't You Hate It When...

You have a ridiculously important object that you know you absolutely can NOT lose in any way because it is so vitally important. So you find a special place to put it, just for that one special item, to make certain you don't lose it.

And then you forget where said special place is.

Yeah, I hate that too.

I'm Not Gonna Get Sick Now

I got home today and there was a bag hanging on my doorknob.

And inside the bag? Four small hand sanitizer containers.

Yep, no way I'm getting Swine Flu now. Not a chance.

Especially since swine flu is passed through the air.

(okay of course I know washing your hands often can help prevent it and yes, I'm being a good girl and staying clean, but really? this was just funny!)

Playin' in the Parks!

I got to take my Traditions class yesterday. Afterward, we hurried home and changed clothes (it was professional dress) and went to the Magic Kingdom!

We hadn't really eaten all day so we ate a little in the MK and then rode a few rides (Thunder Mountain RR, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tiki Room-not really a ride, and the Haunted Mansion were just some of them) and watched the fireworks show which was so totally AMAZING! As we left the parade was beginning, but we didn't stay because two of us had to be awake really early this morning for training.

On the way out I had my bus schedule in hand as we went back to where the buses dropped us off. It takes a long time to get in the parks because the buses drop us off but we still have to ride the tram. Actually, on the way in we had to ask a guest for directions because we couldn't find the trams... needless to say we didn't tell him we worked there. Anyway, as we left I had my map out and we were searching for our bus. Then one of the worker men called me over. He leaned in close to my ear and said quietly, "You a cast member?" Worried I was in trouble I slowly nodded and folded up my map. But of course, no worries. He pretty much could tell I was brand new and had no clue where the bus was. He pointed to a small group of people in the middle of the parking lot and told me that that was where I needed to be if I wanted to go home tonight. I told my friends who were with me and we all went out there. I don't know what we'd have done if he didn't notice my map and the fact that we were all hopelessly lost.

This morning I got up bright and early and had to be at EPCOT by 8am. It's about an hour to get there by bus so I was out by 7. Part of the training was classroom, but the majority was out into the parks. We got a full tour of EPCOT. We even went on the Spaceship Earth ride in the giant golf ball!

We also went on a boat tour in the lagoon as we learned more about the park. So much fun!

Oh, and I got my costume today. I'll actually have three that I'll switch around. Part of my work area will be the "Living Seas" (that's for Dad!) but it's now something like "Nemo and Friends Sea Adventures" or something. Eh. Whatever. I had to go buy new shoes AND socks (I needed black socks). That was lame, but hey, I'm prepared!

Now I'm waiting for my friend to get off work so we can go to the parks. As tired as I am (I got like 5 hours of sleep last night) I really want to go play still. We're planning on going to Hollywood Studios today because Kelly wanted to ride the Tower of Terror. I can't wait to ride "Test Track" in EPCOT because it's supposed to be the fastest ride at the whole resort.

Anyway, I'm gonna go clean a bit now.

You Know You've Been Staring at a Computer Too Long When...

...you're reading a regular piece of paper and as you near the bottom your eyes move to the right hand edge of the page as your finger presses down on nothing wondering why the page isn't scrolling.

TMI But Too Funny...

You know that round thing that pops into the toilet paper holder? Well, last week I went to the bathroom (surprise surprise) while my roommate was outside into the vanity area. Our little round thing that holds the toilet paper up is broken and falls off periodically. Well, this particular time it fell off and rolled under the door out to my roommate who immediately began laughing. "Didja lose something?"

Fortunately the toilet paper itself won't fit under the door. It just fell to the floor. But just now I went to the bathroom and recalled that memory as I pulled the toilet paper off and I started giggling. I came out to find that same roommate at the vanity eying me. "Why were you laughing in there?"

Okay, it's funnier in real life.

Sorta Sick

I have the sniffles and a horribly sore throat. I was eating Ricola yesterday but my throat only felt better as long as one was in my mouth. After I went through three Ricolas within about two hours I figured I'd better stop. It hurts so bad though! Ugh! Also, I learned this morning (because I continued with the constant Ricolas) that it's not good to sneeze with a hard candy in your mouth. Not a good idea! That pretty much freaked me out enough to suck on anymore all day because I thought I was gonna choke and die! And then it sneezed right out into my hand. Icky!

We don't have any school until Monday. Tomorrow there's no school because it's "Examination Day" and Friday is because it's the day before the Fourth of July! What's Examination Day? That's also a new law that the State of Idaho apparently passed that says something to the effect of every college must have one day in the middle of the semester with no school. Okay, so I have no clue what the details are and that "State Law" thing may just be a rumor. Either way it gets us out of school! Yay!

I broke my roommates fork the other day. I was trying to cut butter. The butter was hard okay? And for some reason people think it was weird I was using a fork to cut butter. It's called NO DISHWASHER people! I like to save dishes. Soooo funny though. I think my roommate thought the story was too funny to be mad. So what do I owe her now? A fork? A dollar? That pathetic little fork couldn't have been worth more than that. (btw, she's the same roommate whose knife I broke last year cutting a sandwich)

First Day

First day of school. Again. My second first day this semester. Weird how that works....

I only actually had one class today. Religion. And my Humanities of Islam class is tomorrow. Those in addition to my online Music Theory class are my only classes this block so I'm expecting/hoping it will be a breeze. The only real difficult one will be Humanities of Islam. But I already know the teacher (he went with us to Europe) so that helps a bit, I hope.

Actually, funny story about him. The first time I ever actually spoke to him on a personal level we were in a museum in London. I was with Sarah at the time and the two of us had just walked into the museum with a small group of students as well as the teachers. I had been telling Sarah a few minutes earlier how I was worried about taking pictures because I thought (at that point in the trip) that I'd only have one gig of camera space so I had to be super careful about what I took pictures of.

So we're in the museum and I saw something I just had to have a picture of. So I pulled out my camera and Sarah turned to me and said, "You can't take pictures!" I told her, no it's okay. I can. I really wanted this and I'd delete another. As I was trying to explain while taking the picture at the same time Sarah continued telling me, "No. Dianna, really, you can't take pictures... seriously." We were "arguing" in a way not upset or anything but more bantering a little because I was trying to explain to her it would be okay, I could just delete it. As I went to take the picture, the teacher came up behind me, grabbed my camera and said, "She's right. You're not allowed to take pictures in here. Put it away."

So. Totally. Embarrassed.

I felt horrible for "arguing" with her and going to do it anyway while the teacher watched the whole thing. I was clearly the idiot, as is usual. Haha. I went back to her later and apologized, explaining that I didn't understand and we both laughed about it. Unfortunately the teacher probably just got the impression that I'm a terribly rebellious kid. And that's my excuse if I end up failing his class. Haha. No, actually he seems really nice so I'm not too worried.

My other teacher I had for religion last semester so I already knew he was an excellent teacher. He's really funny and extremely smart. Excellent teacher, but his class is going to require almost three hours of reading a week. Yuck!

All in all I'm pretty darn excited for this semester! I'm excited for classes and seeing what it's like to take block classes--finding out whether they really are as hard as most say they are. I also am going to try to keep going to the gym as much as I can. Today, instead of just running, I decided to do a mile on the elliptical, a mile running, and then a mile on the bike. I'm not sure if that worked better or not than my usual running 2-4 miles. The elliptical always makes my butt sore, though. We'll see.

I love my life!

Music Theory 101

I've been thinking a lot about this soccer class I signed up for second block. It's at 7:45. AM. Meaning morning. And I'm not too excited to wake up at 7am every Monday and Wednesday this coming block if I have another option. So, out of desperation, I checked the website for the jillionth time to see if there was any other potentially fun elective credit I could take so I could at least be at or above the twelve credit mark. And I actually FOUND one!

Music Theory. It's an online course so yesterday I emailed the professor and asked if I could please be in his class and if there were deadlines that were already passed. He sent me a very nice email this morning asking me to give him my I-Card info and that he'd wave the deadlines that had passed for me and register me into the course as long as I promised to attempt to get caught up as quickly as possible.

At 4pm today I began the course and have taken the first two exams already without even looking at the course because, really people. Beginning music theory when I've been playing piano since who knows how long and had band all throughout middle and high school. Yeah, piece of cake.

Or so I thought. I'm now on unit three. Out of nine. And to be totally honest it was a cinch up until about twenty minutes ago (learning about treble and bass clefs and what notes are, haha). I never learned about compound duples and simple triads! What the heck? I understand how to count it all and I know how many beats everything gets and all... but it's all the terminology that's throwing me out of bounds. Wow.

So I guess this'll be fun and interesting. I need to be on exam 5 by the end of this week to be caught up. Hopefully I'll figure this out. I'm gonna feel like an idiot if I fail music theory 101 (okay, well the real course is 190 but we all know it means 101).

Stories

I know this is the second post in one day. But I've had a lot of stories from the trip that I don't want to forget. So here are some stories for my own documentation and your (hopefully) enjoyment. Some aren't even that great. They may be little "you had to be there" moments that you'll probably think are dumb. Don't judge. Haha.

"That Doesn't Even Make Any Sense"

When in France there was this restaurant that we ate at called "Flunch." We were going there for dinner. I was with my friend Carol and I made a little joke about how they should have called the restaurant "Flinner" instead. Haha.... hahaha..... ha.... The following conversation followed:

Carol: "What?"
Me: "Flinner! You know, Flunch. Dinner... Flinner!"
Carol: "What are you talking about?"
Me: "If we went there for lunch then it could be Flunch... but we're... um... doing... dinner. So instead of Flunch for lunch it's dinner at.... Flinner?"
Carol: *completely blank expression looking at me like I'm an idiot*
Me: "Never mind...."
Carol: *exasperated* "That doesn't even make any sense"
Me: as Cathryn would put it *facepalm*

Pete and RePete

Also when we were in Paris we attended the Paris ward for church. We didn't really have any hymnbooks. Or a bishopric really. We kind of just made up our own ward in a way. But we did have a keyboard and a girl who knew how to play some songs. So we sang "There Is A Green Hill Far Away" as our sacrament hymn. Except everyone forgot some of the verses. So we sang the same verse a couple of times. So hard not to snicker.


Florence: Homeless Shelter = Fun!

As you may remember Florence was where we stayed in the homeless shelter. We were fed a single roll for breakfast in the morning. One morning we also got a tiny cup of hot chocolate to go with it. But the second morning we were there the machine was broken so no hot chocolate. But we got a roll!

Anyway, what was really funny was Sunday morning. In a coed bathroom. With 44 girls and 6 sinks. You do the math.

Steven came in and there were three rows of girls in front of the sinks doing hair/makeup/the usuals (the front row bent down at the sink as low as she could go brushing teeth or doing her eyes, the second row was a little higher doing other makeup and the back row was usually doing hair). He looked around and his eyes got HUGE. "Holy girls!" he exclaimed. "That's right. We are holy!"


London: "Would I Like Some Vodka With That?"

We were at a restaurant in London one of our first nights in Europe. if you don't know me and my family, we are all BIIIIG water drinkers. Anyway, we went to eat at this place called the Stock Pot. The waiter came to our table of four with two glasses of water. He set one down in front of me and the other in front of Brittany who was sitting right beside me. As he turned away to go grab the other two glasses of water, I took the glass he set in front of me and drained it. The whole thing. I was thirsty, okay? The waiter turned back around and as he set down the other two glasses he looked down at mine. You should have SEEN his face! "Oh my! Did..." *looks at me* (English accent remember) "Woah! If you drink Vodka the way you drink water, take me drinking with you!" I think they told me my face was as red as a tomato. I'm pretty sure we burned all the calories of that whole meal from our laughing fit right there.


38C?

While at the airport in Cincinnati awaiting our flight to London, we were all lazing around with a four hour layover. All of us tired already form the traveling. Remember, I'd woken up around 2am and gotten a full maybe 3 hours sleep the night before. Anyway, one of the boys in our group came up to me and another girl who were just sitting around and asked us a question I thought was really odd:

Him: "Hey. Do either of you two have a 38C?"
Me: *thoroughly surprised* "Uhh..." *look at girl beside me who shakes her head wondering why he wants to know* "No...."
Him: *turning to another girl in the group* "It was 38C, wasn't it?"
Her: "Yeah! Or D."
Him: *looks at us expectantly again.. we both shake our heads, I'm totally flabbergasted that a guy would be asking this!*

He proceeded around the group for a while, getting all nos and I was completely surprised he had the guts to be asking all these girls that question. Until finally I heard a response that made it all make sense.

One of the girls: "No.. let's see... I have 14 F. I'm not sitting anywhere close to them."

Ohhhh, it was seat numbers! Apparently, one of the girls in the group wanted to know who she'd be sitting beside/near. Wow Dianna. Wow. Keep in mind I'm only including this because the people involved will hopefully never ever read this because I would be that embarrassed... Oi! I'm an idiot.


Again in Florence... Feed the Birds

This wasn't so funny as it was weird. Carol and I went to grab lunch one day at a market and then found this small group of benches on a square. There was a tree nearby and about four empty benches. We picked one, sat down, ate our food, and then began just talking feeding out little leftovers to the birds. After a minute or so I noticed this large lady dressed in what seemed like rags and quite frankly reminded me of the pigeon lady from Home Alone come toward us. Since there were three other benches I kind of ignored her. Until she was right up on me. I moved my purse as I saw her getting to sit right beside me. And by "right beside me" I mean there was about a foot and a half of room left on the bench there and she took up all of it. I held my purse tight and made sure I had a close eye on it and that's when the stench hit me. She was so close her side was rubbing me and she proceeded to take her grubby bag and place it in the NOT space in between us making things very crowded and uncomfortable. I looked around at the other three benches and then over at Carol. We both got up and walked away and the lady proceeded to just sit there. Weeeeird.....


Verona: Icky Pig!

We stopped in Verona only for a few hours. But there was this neat little market there. I saw this dead pig and wanted my picture by it. I was trying to act all evil and menacing. Just as my friend was going to take it this man came up behind me and grabbed me. No more evil face. I'm surprised she didn't get my cry of fear right before I tried to laugh it off and keep it cool. Sooo funny, and gross.





Concentration Camp:

We visited Mauthausen Concentration Camp while in Germany. At Mauthausen, the bus let us off at the bottom of the "Stairs of Death." A pile of steep terrible steps. We had to walk up them and along the cliff to get to the Concentration Camp.



We went through and afterwards the teachers told us all to use the bathroom before getting back on the bus. Long story short, one of the girls got lost. No it wasn't her fault at all. Even the teachers realized there was nothing she could have done except have extra batteries for her sister's radio which died (she loaned her radio to her sister and so didn't get the memo that the bus was in a different place). She didn't get in trouble, but she did go back down the steps to go to the bus and slipped on the way. Needless to say after waiting about fifteen tense minutes we were so happy to have her back and she was happy to see us. She thought we'd left without her, even though her identical twin sister was on the bus and would never have let us leave without her. Awww.

When we were in Salzburg they played the movie the Sound of Music every single night we were there. We went to some of the filming sites. This is the one where the kids are jumping up and down on the steps. I made Tessa and Amy do this with me. You can see how happy Tessa was about it. Haha, not sure.... The Salzburg Castle is in the background (yes we walked all the way up there) and just barely below the castle on the left is the Abbey where Maria lived.




French Kiss... For Reals

We stopped for only a few minutes by the Amiens Cathedral on the way to Paris. We got out for a few minutes to look at it. Long story short, one of the girls in our group got a kiss. On the lips. By a French guy she'd met about ten minutes before. You can only imagine how the bus full of 43 other girls acted for the next two hours to Paris. Bahahahahahahaha! Actually, the teacher gave her more flak than anyone.


Mind The What?

One of our teachers had served his mission in Vienna so he was telling us about life there. As we walked around, there were many horse carriages and so came the random blobs of brown goo in the streets. As the group watched a particular horse do it's business the teacher gave us a wise piece of advice.

"In London," he said, "It was mind the gap. But here, the rule is to mind the crap."

Relax in Hot Springs? Oh No, Feel the Rush!

We went to the hot springs yesterday!

Well, it wasn't exactly what it sounds like. They built a pool over the hot springs so we went swimming in naturally hot water. And then there was the super hot water. And just for fun they put in this tiny ice cold pool. So cute to watch the little kids running and jumping in the tiny pool (it was only big enough really for maybe three little kids at a time and only one adult) and then get into the hot one and then back to the cold. So funny. I did it once. I got into the hot pool. Warmed up to it. Got into the ice cold one. I fully submerged and then jumped back into the hot one. Ohhhh, the burn! Ahhhhh.

So fun!

My Name Is Dianna.... And I Have A Drinking Problem

I walked home from the store yesterday in a hurry because I wanted to get back before the next session of conference started. Exhausted from walking, I went straight to the sink after coming in the door to grab a cup of water.

Problem: When I'm really excited to drink water, I tend to pour the water into my mouth faster than my throat drains.

Hence the big wet spot that seems to be constantly on my shirt.

I like to drink, okay?