Week three

Hi everyone,

Another great week down. 

Highlights (both work and non-work) :

• I absolutely love working in a place where I get to hear so many different languages on a daily basis.  So far I've heard (and I'm probably forgetting some) French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish and Hebrew.  I often can understand a good part of the French being spoken, some of the Spanish, a little bit of the Portuguese, and then pretty much none of the others.  Which is awesome.     
• The badges we give out are stickers that go in your wilderness explorer handbook. While I was helping a mom and her daughter get started with the program the other day, the mom was rummaging around in a bag she had with her.  I gave the girl her player badge and told her "This tells everyone in the park that you're an official wilderness explorer" and the mom handed me a sticker and said "This tells everyone what you are."  It was a sticker that said "You are beautiful" and made my day :)
• I registered for the Disney Princess Half Marathon! Which I'm super excited about.  It's not until February, so I'm going to hold off on starting to train for it until it cools down a bit.  But I've wanted to do a half marathon for a while now, and I cannot imagine a better place for my first one than Disney World. 
• Maggie and I had a Chipotle and Trader Joe's date on Thursday and it was delicious and perfect.  I was very happy.

My vegan burrito

• A few other presenters and I stayed at DAK after work on Friday and rode Expedition Everest three times.  Not actually something I recommend doing (at least not three times in such quick succession), but it was fun. And we got a sweet photo from it. 

The Wilderness must be explored! Caw caw! Rawr!

Explorers

Explorers plus friends and roommates
(Please appreciate the guy photobombing our picture as well)

• I had a very enthusiastic small child yesterday grab my chin in order to tell me something.  I'd squatted down, so in order to get my attention before telling me something that was apparently crucial, he just reached out and grabbed hold of my chin.
• When you earn all 31 of the badges in our program, you become a senior wilderness explorer and you get your senior wilderness explorer badge.  People usually come to our headquarters (HQ) to collect those later in the day, so you often only get to give them out if you're working there in the afternoon/evening.  That is one of my favorite parts of the job.  Pretty much no matter what age the explorer is, he or she is super excited to become a senior wilderness explorer, and it's actually my job to make that moment special for him or her.  Each presenter has a different way of celebrating this achievement, but I've never had a ceremony be anything less than awesome.  Especially when you get to give the badge to a little kid and you can just tell that you've made their day by shouting their name and recognizing what they've worked for. 

That about sums up this week.  Today I was finally able to sleep in, which was 100% necessary.  I'm planning to hit up one of the parks later with Erin (my roommate) and then tomorrow I believe we're going to a state park for some hiking and swimming. 

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!