Week five!

Hi everyone! 

Happy Thursday! At least for most of the working world. Today's my hump-day...

I had a wonderful and very busy last week, so here's a post going over what happened.  It includes the start of my mom's visit, which was from Friday evening to yesterday morning. 

With my mom's visit, I only had a one day weekend last weekend, so I worked Monday-Friday (7/25-29).  I had something after work each day, including a trip to the airport to pick Maggie up from visiting home, a team builder at Winter Summerland mini golf, and a planned trip to Rising Star (a karaoke bar at City Walk, which is just outside Universal Studios).  I didn't end up mini golfing with everyone, but just being there and hanging out was a lot of fun. 

At work, some highlights:

• I finally got to hear the siamangs and the gibbons call.  We talk about siamangs calling often at our Animal Call badge location, so I've told guests about it probably hundreds of times by now but I'd never actually gotten to see it happen. (Check out this video so you have an idea what I'm talking about).  Siamangs are a species of ape from SE Asia (Difference between monkeys and apes? Apes have no tails).  They have a throat pouch that, when it's expanded, allows them to be heard up to two miles away from each other.  We have two twin girls at the park, and I love to watch them playing with each other and swinging around their habitat. 
• I made someone cry. In a good way.  A girl came up to me and told me it was the last day of her college program and asked if she could become a senior wilderness explorer.  I said of course, and we did a small ceremony to celebrate.  In the middle of the ceremony, she started crying and told me that Up is her favorite movie.  That 100% made my day, that I was able to do something that made a guest so happy. 
• Another language victory. It's not that uncommon for me to do a badge in two languages at one time, saying something in English to one part of the group and then repeating myself in Spanish or French to the other part of the group.  Last week for the first time I did a badge location in French and Spanish simultaneously.  Which was hard mentally, switching back and forth between the languages but so cool to have it work. Well, it worked well enough that I think everyone understood what I was trying to share. 

Mom got here to visit on Friday night! I was so so excited for her to visit and it was so good to see her.  Her flight got delayed from a thunderstorm on Friday night, so she didn't arrive until almost 8pm.  We went to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner, which I think I've mentioned before and is a really nice buffet that we don't have at home with tons of fresh food.  So we explored and it was delicious. 

Mickey welcomed us to our room at Port Orleans French Quarter!

On Saturday, my mom and I spent a full day in the parks.  We started at DAK, where I got to show her around to a bunch of our badge locations and she got to meet some of the people I work with. We also hit up the big rides/attractions in the park: Kilimanjaro Safaris (during which I saw cheetahs for the first time!), Expedition Everest, the Festival of the Lion King (always so so good), and Kali River Rapids (somehow we were in the two wettest seats both times we rode it, so we got soaked).

I learned the call with the help of Connor (you can see his hands on the right), Molly and of course Dug and Russell!

Then I accompanied Russell back to his clubhouse

Where we showed off our call skills

The cast discount at the Grand Floridian Cafe for lunch right now is 40% off, so my mom and I went there for lunch and met my roommate Erin (Haley and Liana both had work on Saturday).  The restaurant itself was beautiful, with fresh flowers everywhere.  There wasn't much on the menu that was already vegan, so I asked the waitress for a suggestion and she spoke with the chef.  He said that they could take their miso salmon and make it a miso tofu dish, so Erin and I both ordered that.  10/10 would recommend, it was delicious.  Overall a lovely meal, and so reasonably priced with the discount.

Lunch was delicious

The flowers were beautiful

The Grand Floridian is so pretty!

After lunch Mom and I went to Epcot for the rest of the day.  We had fast passes for Soarin', which I think Mom really liked.  We also watched some of the shows in the World Showcase, including "Les Parfaits Inconnus" in Canada which was SO INCREDIBLY GOOD. Four people performing a mix of comedy, music, circus/acrobatic stuff...so good. It definitely became my new favorite show there.

They were so much fun!

We stayed at the park until the fireworks show, IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth.  Always beautiful, and all of the countries around the World Showcase are involved.

The building in Canada lit up

Two parks and a nice lunch made for a long day, so we went back to the hotel right after and went to bed. I got some pictures of the hotel which I'll include in another post. 

I've got to go get ready for work, so look for more posts coming up about the rest of my mom's visit!