I am so blessed!

Hello, everyone!

I have been awful at updating, but that's exactly what I anticipated.  That just means that I'm having a wonderful time and I'm too busy to sit in front of my computer for too long at a time.   I earned my ears with no trouble at all!  For a little over a month now I've been working all on my own, driving two week safaris every twenty minutes.  It can be exhausting at times, but it's unbelievably worth it.  :)

It has been almost two months since check-in now, and the time has flown by tremendously quickly.  It's hard to believe that I have only a little over five months left!  This is going to be over before I know it.  I just wanted to take a brief moment to blog about the fact that I am amazingly blessed.  I have a lot of personal reasons why I'm blessed, including good health, security, and a wonderful, loving support system of family members and friends.  But since this blog is focused around the Disney College Program, allow me to go on a rant of how wonderful this experience truly is:

So many people save up all of the money that they can so that they can travel across the world and vacation at Walt Disney World for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  I, on the other hand, work here.  I have tremendous benefits of being able to go to the parks whenever I want for however long I want, get seemingly limitless amounts of discounts, and even get some free tickets for friends and family.  I am even paid!  It's a humble paycheck, but it's all I need.  Sure, I work long hours.  But I work them by making people smile.  I have the honor of being a maker of magical moments, whether it be by seeing guests' faces when they see an elephant or giraffe for the first time in their lives, or by a simple moment of kindness on stage that just so happens to go a long way.  Every moment that I spend at work may be just a moment for me, but every bit is part of a Disney vacation memory that will last every guest a lifetime.  What a privilege.

Sadly, a lot of college programmers still find room to complain a lot.  That's really a shame.  I really implore anyone who is reading this to avoid being like that at all costs.  It does not matter what your circumstances may be.  When you put things in perspective, you realize that as long as you have air in your lungs you have every reason to have a smile on your face.  And we in particular have particularly special reasons to be joyful.  Having a no-good day every once in a while is one thing, but I think it's important to try to not have a negative attitude be your regular attitude.

I really am so blessed to be down here.  I wish that my closest friends and family could be here with me, but it seems like God decided to send me down here on my own.  I'm making great new friends, though- not to replace the old, of course!  I'm not entirely sure what God had planned for me by sending me to participate in this program, but I am sure that I'm going to try my hardest to make the most of it.

I am so grateful for this opportunity!

"I have watched constantly that in our work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld." - Walt Disney