Hello and good morning... It's currently 4.15am and I'm writing this at a time when I'm waiting for an emergency maintenance guy/or gal to save us from the closet that is currently filling with water, dripping through from the ceiling! Day two in housing and our upstairs neighbours have welcomed us with a flooded closet. Thanks guys!
I suspect their bath, sink or (worst case scenario) toilet has overflown and is dripping through rather rapidly via the lighting fixture in our ceiling. This comes literally the day after our housing presentation where we were informed on how to get an emergency call-out when necessary. Good thing we did!
I called security about twenty minutes ago (as we were told to do) and I'm interested to see how quickly maintenance respond. I feel like they're seeing to the apartment upstairs as the dripping is starting to slow. It's a good thing I heard the sound of it dripping! I initially thought my roommate had left the shower running or something.
After waking up my roommate in an effort to save everything from the floor, I told him to go back to bed as he needs to be up at 6am for his induction whilst I don't have a class until 1pm. Plus, I'm still jet-lagged anyway so 4am here is 9am back home. Lucky for me there wasn't all that much on the floor. A couple pairs of shoes have gotten wet and the left-handed sleeves of my shirts are wet. Apart from that though, it hasn't caused any damage. My first fear was that it had managed to wet the electronics in my locker but luckily they too were all good. However, I may very well get renters insurance sooner rather than later after this experience. I don't know what I'd do had my electronics been damaged. Certainly no vlogs for a while that's for sure!
Yesterday was such a fun day! My arrival group and I all met in the morning for our 9am immigration meeting. The meeting itself was more of a talk and a cautionary tale of how not to get kicked out of the United States whilst on the program. It wasn't all that long and we had an hour or two before our housing talk at 11am. As we were at The Commons, we decided to walk over the road to the premium outlets to kill time. Not a lot was open but some of us managed to pick-up a Starbucks and then browse the discounted Disney Parks store Character Warehouse! They have some amazing deals in there and I will certainly be going back once I have my I.D. for that extra 10% discount.
The housing meeting was actually great! Similar to the immigration talk, it was more about making everyone aware of what you can and can't do whilst living in housing. Brittney and Randev who were running the class were super energetic and whilst what they were talking about wasn't always super fun, they held the room well and got us through it in an hour. I recall the meeting being a lot longer and a lot less interesting last time.
One thing that's changed since my last program; all the staff at the front-desks are now Disney cast members. There were often times when the people working at the front desks weren't all that concerned with your concerns. It's great to know that Disney took this step to improve our housing service experience as those that I have spoken to so far embody the brand and look to help in any way they can.
After the housing meeting concluded, the entirety of the UK arrival group and a representative or two from Mexico and Norway, walked to Panera for some lunch. I had the cream of chicken and wild rice bread bowl soup and I may go as far to say it was almost better than my grandparents' home made soup.
The group then split into two. Some people wanted to try out the free food at the Vista Way pool party... but turns out they didn't have much luck as they'd been told the wrong time. By the time they got there, they'd unfortunately already missed the event. I drove the rest of us to Disney Springs where we pottered about, popped into the Coca-Cola store and also treated ourselves to a Sprinkles cupcake (my second one in three days... oops).
After a few hours in the afternoon to chill out, eat dinner and such, we all reconvened at the Chatham bus stop. Two people in our arrival group have never been to Walt Disney World before or even America! The rest of us thought it only right we take them to watch Wishes from the Grand Floridian dock! We took the B bus to the Polynesian where we took a quick stroll up to the monorail and over to the Grand Flo. Once there, I took everyone on a guided tour of the lobby whilst we listened to the live band jazzing out the Disney classics. This was shortly followed by cocktails at Mizner's (sp?). Hope and I had 'The Grand' cocktail (it was lovely) and we enjoyed the moment of feeling super classy.
We made it out just in time to watch the fireworks from the dock. It was such a lovely moment for us all to be there as an arrival group and enjoying our first sprinkle of Disney magic. We've learnt that our arrival group doesn't mind a cocktail or two... so we walked back to the Polynesian for cocktails at the Ohana bar. I had the Magical Star cocktail (classic Adam), a few people had a cocktail that came in a hollowed out pineapple called the Lapu Lapu and some ordered pulled pork nachos. Yes, they are as amazing as they sound.
We left the Poly at 11pm in a bid to not take seats away from those cast members closing Magic Kingdom at midnight. All-in-all, it was yesterday evening that I settled right down and finally felt at home. Another Disney Program Alumni (Hollie) and I both agreed that it's trips to Disney Springs and the Resorts that really make you feel at home on the program.
Here's hoping that maintenance get here soon. I'm pretty tired and have somewhat of a sore head from my two rather strong cocktails last night. I haven't really eaten since lunch yesterday either as I took my time making dinner last night and had to leave it in the fridge to make it to the bus on time. Say no more! They've arrived as I'm typing this in-fact. Pretty good when you consider that I called them at 4am! At least I'll get to sleep soon... YAY!
Until next time... Have a magical day!
Adam
Until next time... Have a magical day!
Adam