17 days.

Final Month in Florida

Mechelle and I celebrated Grinchmas at Universal Studios! Holy characters!


Universal also sold really cool Christmas hats. This titled back and forth on its own! Too bad it was like $40


Emma and I went to the CP Formal and they had wicked cool and random characters! In addition to Mowgli and Baloo, we met the three hyaenas, timon and rafiki, terk, tarzan and jane and king louie.


Thankfully, I was there for the completion of our Coaster fastpasses masterpiece.


Dain came to visit! We went resort hopping and found the beautiful giant gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian


We saw the Osbourne Lights too, and spent at least 2 hours trying to get a good picture. Dain was so impressive with his new camera equipment that a few people came up to us with photopass cards thinking we were cast members!


Dain also came to visit Mickey. It was pretty late at night and both were quite tired.


Mickey and Minnie made some more magic, per usual.


Emma accidentally stumbled upon Mickey in his cute Christmas outfit at just the right time.


Kadye, Emma, Malina and I went on the hunt for the black cat. Dressed in black, we were ready to go. And we found it!



Emma and I went Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party and had a blast! Although, they used a new brand of Gluten Free Cookies which were not very good.


Donald was adorable, per usual.

Things don't always go as planned

I'll never lead a normal life. As much as I try to ignore it, my multitude of diseases will always play a role in my life. As it happens, I ended up getting quite sick in Florida, to the point of no longer being able to function. I decided to come home for three days to come see my GI and try to get all of this fixed. I ended up spending almost the entire three days at Mass General Hospital getting test after test after test, and my three days at home ended up being a lot more. I ended up having to go back to Florida to sort things out and actually move home to get healthy in time for SAS. It was so hard to do, but I knew that if I tried to suck it up for another month, I wouldn't have the health to go on Semester at Sea. Thankfully, I found some wonderful managers over at Hollywood Studios, and although everything is a work in progress, they've been amazing at helping me figure it out and I hope to god that I can remain seasonal. The thought of not being able to do this job again just kills me, and I pray this all works out.

As it is, I am in Boston and hyped on a bunch of meds, but feeling a lot better. I'm not totally there yet, but I have continued faith of this improving and being ready to set sail by January 15th. Helping that, of course, is the fact that I have the best GI in the world and appointments to get checked-up galore. And though I miss Disney terribly, I had another absolutely amazing semester there and for that I am so thankful. I had the most amazing roommates in the world, and truthfully, I may even miss them more than I miss the fireworks, rides, parades and gluten-free chicken fingers.

All of this extra time does make it a little bit easier to pack though. I admit, it's a lot easier this way rather than trying to unpack from Disney and pack for SAS all at once. I have three giant piles in my room, and other than buying 4 months worth of toiletries, I am pretty much ready to load up these suit cases. Which is good, since Dain is flying in tomorrow and I have a feeling he will have absolutely nothing packed and ready to go.

For field programs, I was able to get everything I tried for through SAS. I'm not sure if I wanted that, because I do like the spontaneity idea, but at the same time, I choose these big trips because I felt safer traveling with SAS than on my own. And I'm sure either way, independent or not, every day will be amazing.
The trips I ended up getting are:
Brazil - Amazon and Rio 4 Day-Trip
Ghana - Not a trip through SAS, but I registered for the Senase Village homestay through Can Do Tours. I've heard amazing things about this trip, and honestly, this is what I am most excited for on the whole voyage.
South Africa - Habitat for Humanity day trip
India - 5 Day trip to Agra and Jaipur
Vietnam - 2 Service trips -- one to the Zoo with a school, another to a school for the deaf
Japan - One day homestay

I'm hoping my FDPs don't turn out to be as time consuming as I currently think (I've heard teachers are really flexible) because as of right now almost every day in South Africa is taken up by FDPs, as all my classes have at least one here. I'd really love to enjoy this amazing country, so I'm really hoping it will work out so I can have at least a couple free days.

Anyway, I guess the moral of this story is that life is unpredictable. But all you really need is faith, trust and pixiedust and everything will play out as it should. In this situation, I might have lost a few weeks at Disney, but if I had to miss out on a last few weeks at Disney and an entire semester at sea, well..the choice is rather obvious.

Figuring out field programs is such a headache.

Argghhh