What a week!

I have to say, I've been having a wonderful time in the past few days. I have gotten to talk with some loved ones from home, finally made some decisions on gifts for people, started making plans for the school year, and been working at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and having a blast doing it. Wednesday morning, my roommates and a few extra friends got dressed up for a ladies' breakfast buffet at the deluxe hotel the Grand Floridian. We were celebrating Vicky's birthday, the friend of my roommate Amy, and it was nice because she was given a celebratory cupcake at the end of breakfast (which she had no room to fit in her stomach of course.)The place we went is a character meet-and-greet breakfast, and so in one sitting we had the pleasure of making acquaintances with Pooh, Tigger, Mary Poppins, Alice, and my personal favourite, the Mad Hatter. That's one more achievement to check off my bucket list! I worked that evening, but Thursday was my day off and so I used it to satisfy my Disney park craving by visiting Disney's Animal Kingdom. It was my first visit! I went with my friend Val, and we of course went on Everest and visited all the well-known attractions. By the time the afternoon showers started, we were both tired and ready to head home. Val took a nap and I took a much-needed trip to Walmart to stock up on supplies. By the time I got to bed it was late, and I had an early morning shift today so I relaxed and eventually went to bed. Now, at the Lodge there are two different gift shops on either side of the huge complex, and today was my first shift at the smaller one of the two. I got to work just before the sun rose, but it was still quite warm out even while it was dark. My shift started at 6:30 and as I was there a bit early, I took advantage of the fact that you can watch the animals grazing just outside the window of the area I was in. How cool is that? This morning there were zebras out, so I snuck a quick pic and then went to punch in for work. I am used to sleeping in and then working until 12am, so today it was tough to wake up, even with the benefit of free coffee to the Cast Members at Johari (the gift shop's name.) I was granted an early release (don't worry mom, it was just an hour earlier than I was scheduled) and went home for a nap. At around seven I woke up just as Amy came in to settle down for her own nap. I think she intended to get up and waste some energy before going back to bed again, but it is currently 1am and she hasn't emerged. I'll probably go in and join her after this. Anyways, I got up and returned my movies as well as rented some more, cooked the sweet potatoes that I had bought last week (baked with butter and cinnamon - delicious!)and now here I am. Tomorrow is my last day at the Lodge, but I have applied to pick up a shift there next week on one of my days off just because I know I'll miss it! Last but not least are a few photos from our character breakfast, taken by the other girls. I finally bought a cheap SD card and am no longer limited to just 10 pictures a day, but of course I accidentally seemed to have dropped a chair on my camera cable, so it's now out of commission. I'll try to fix it by my next post. Until then!