Week #3 - Work Training!

Welcome back to my blog! Today I'm writing about week 3 of my Disney adventures, which mostly was full of my work training days.

To start off the week, on Sunday January 26th, I went to church that morning and then just had a catch up day for things I needed to get done. Then that night, my friend Shelby and I decided to try out going to Jellyrolls, which is a dueling piano bar at Disney's Boardwalk Resort. On Sunday nights, it's free for cast members to get in, so it usually gets pretty packed. It was so much fun with the different songs (including lots of Disney ones) being played and sang by the 2 dueling piano players. I'm sure going here will be an almost weekly tradition during my program!

Monday I had the day off and all of my roommates and friends were busy with work or other plans, so I decided to try out going to a park alone for the first time! I went to Epcot to spend the day exploring more of the Festival of the Arts. I ate lunch at Sunshine Seasons where I hadn't ever eaten before, helped paint a mural, saw the amazing chalk drawings, and got to go on a few rides with the Fastpasses I had made. My solo park day was actually a lot of fun, because I could just do whatever I wanted at my own pace. I even brought my little Spaceship Earth wishable plush and took some adorable pictures in front of the real Spaceship Earth! It was such a nice, relaxing day off work.

    

Tuesday I continued my work training at Animal Kingdom with Tier 4, which was learning all about stock shifts. Sometimes I will have these shifts at work where instead of working register, I will be checking a list on a phone for quantities of merchandise and pulling items from the stock room for one of our stores or carts.

Wednesday was my last day of training, Tier 5, which consisted of learning all about working in the kitchen for Zuri's Sweets Shop. The only foods we actually prepare are the chocolate covered strawberries and pineapple; everything else is already prepared at other locations and brought to us to put out in the caseline. It was a lot to learn, because there is such a specific process on how to put the sweets out on the trays and what to pay attention to on receiving and expiration dates. In addition, we serve frozen icees that can contain alcohol so I learned how to make those. There also is a certain way to close the shop up and clean at the end of the night, and since a lot of my shifts are closing shifts, this was something we were taught. Overall, it's fun working at Zuri's, but at the same time, it's a little hectic!

After Tier 5, I had officially "earned my ears," so I took that off of my nametag and showed up to work on Thursday for my first day on my own! My trainers were amazing, so I felt really prepared, but I was still pretty nervous for my first day alone. However, it went so well! It was a great feeling knowing I was able to handle working independently and feel confident about it.
 

Friday and Saturday were both work days for me too. Although now I've started where I'm going to be spending 5 days out of the week in Africa, I love my location so much! At first I was nervous about my coworkers, coordinators, and leaders, but everyone has been so welcoming and nice! Each person has been willing to help out and answer questions, and it's been great being able to meet all of them along with my other college program participants at my work location.

In my merchandise role, it's so great being able to meet guests from all over the world. It's crazy that I've already met people from Champaign, Glen Carbon, and other towns close to where I'm from in Illinois. My favorite part of work so far is just the guest interactions, and I even have my own pin lanyard to wear so that I can pin trade with people, which is a ton of fun!

This blog post was a little short, but I'm trying to catch up and thought I should do a post for each individual week. The post about last week, Week #4, will be coming in the next few days and it will be more exciting, because this past week I did some fun things with friends! Keep an eye out for it being posted soon, and as always, thanks for reading!