Quick update

This is going to be a short post. Just wanted to update before I started another full day!

Yesterday was exciting, yeah not really but what ever. Started the day off with a fun and exciting drug test! They said they do it randomly and we where all attractions people so thats why we where chosen. We got a shuttle from vista way to the health place and then back after. Once I got back I stayed in the house and spent time with the roommates before our housing welcome session. At 2:30 we had a welcome session at the commons clubhouse.  It was a basic meeting going over some of the rules and codes they have at the housing complexes. Oh and Ali guess what!?!?!?! You are allowed into the housing complex after all! Yes that is right the bug can come in. She just has to have someone with her at all time, and be out by 7PM. After that housing meting I came home and then went to Walgreens and got a few things. Finally have a filtered water bottle, I heard the water here isn't good so I got a water bottle. Turns out the water is not that bad at all. What ever now I have cold water in the fridge as well as a water bottle now. I love all of my roommates so far. They are all really funny and we get a long well. We are very open about how we like things and we work together to figure out how to organize stuff. I have 4 out of 5 roommates here. I am living with two lovely girls from south Africa, one girl from Norway and one from Canada! I also realized the amount of research I have put into this program is not normal. The girl from Canada has done this program before and I feel I know almost as much as her. The other three roommates have no idea about some things. The girls from south Africa didn't even know what Traditions was. Oh well good to be surprised I guess. Well that is all for now! Time to go to some more meetings! I will update later today!


Have a magical day!

Sam

First night

After the shuttle bus ride to vista we went into the building and got our papers and signed some stuff. Got our housing ID and this nice lady told us some more things we needed to know. I am staying in Vista Way. Yes my last choice but at least I am super close to the bus. Otherwise I would not be happy about this place. I am in a three bedroom apartment. When I first arrived there was one girl moved in. She is from Norway and her name is Monica. I unpacked my carry on and called home. After that I got on a bus to Chatham to meet with Carolyn to go to Walmart. Few hours later I get back to vista. I forgot I was in building 26 and was looking for building 25. I also forgot how close I was to the bus stop. I ended up walking around my building twice. I was getting so frustrated because my bags where really heavy. Eventually I figured it out and got my stuff to my apartment. I unpacked everything and organized the best I could. I just had a shower and made the worst cup of tea in my life. The plus side is I found un-glazed poptarts. They are vegan so I am happy! Feeling homesick right now but going to push through it. I knew I wasn't ready for this but I did it any way. Stupid me right? I am promising myself I will be here at least two months then I can decide what I want to do.

My new bed for the year (or two months)

Have a magical day, 

Sam

2 more days

I can't believe I only have two more days before I leave! This is crazy! I don't have any cold feet about this. I still want to go, part of me though just wishes I had more time here before leaving. Although if I did I wouldn't spend my time any different then I did. I am going to miss everyone and everything so much. I love being independent and going places but I also like having a home base. People say the program goes by so fast. I know 9 weeks at camp goes by so fast, hopefully this will be the same. When at camp we have a saying that the days are long but the weeks are short. I hope this is also true for Disney. This is the longest I have ever been away from home. That will be the biggest adjustment. Honestly sorry family and friends but I am going to miss my cats the most. With family and friends you can use technology to talk to them. With cats though you need to be with this to feel their warmth and love. Please mom and dad try not to kill the cats while I am gone. I like them for some reason and would like to have them here when I get back! Thanks a bunch!

Haven't done any more packing then I did last Sunday. That's the plan for tomorrow and Monday. I am going to have everything in my suitcase and carton that I can and then on Tuesday morning put the last min thigs before the airport! 

I will update more as I do more to prep to leave.  

Have a magical day! 

Sam

Farewell party

This past sunday I had some people over so I could see everyone one last time before I leave. It was a small drop in with family and close friends. It was nice to see everyone again, it was a bitter sweet event though. It was nice to see everyone I love and care for but at the same time it wasn't. Most of the people who where there are my family. It made me kinda sad knowing I would go a year without seeing most of them. My aunt and uncle now have a place in Orlando, over the year some family will be coming out to florida. The biggest thing I noticed from this gathering was all the support I have. Everyone genuinely seemed excited/proud of me and what I am going to do in the next year. I know that not everyone understands why I am not in school and why I want to work at Disney. Even with that I knew they still supported me in my decision to do this. If any of you are reading this who where there that afternoon, thank you. Thank you for coming and making this transition easier. I am so proud and honoured to have each and every single one of you in my life. With the party behind me it is now time to start packing! I will write about that and my last week in Canada later in the week.

8 MORE DAYS!!!!!!


Have a magical day!

Sam

11 more days!

I can't believe it is almost time for me to leave!! I was really nervous and excited to go a few weeks ago. Now the nerves have all gone and I am just excited! I figured out the banking thing. I received a new bank card in the mail, it's a visa debit card. I read in the booklet they gave me that if you use it internationally just say you are paying by visa and you avoid some of the charges. It's obviously not a Visa card so I will need to remeber how much I have left in my account.

I said goodbye to some friends and Collingwood this weekend. As a tradition of the last few years my family always goes to Collingwood for thanksgiving normally I don't want to go. This year though I was so excited. Probably because that was the last time I was going to be there for over a year. I saw my good friends the Sorleys on Saturday along with my friend Danielle. We spent the day together and it was really hard to say goodbye to them. On Sunday I hung out with my friend Danielle. In the afternoon I went to the village with my friend Gavin. It was nice to see him after all this time. Overall it was a nice weekend to start my goodbyes. 

On the Disney side of things, I have started to get my things together to start packing. I have put my request in for housing. I will make a separate post on that though. I cleaned my room and finally unpacked from camp. I decided it was probably time as I am about to start a new adventure. I am organizing my folder with all my papers in them to be ready for the flight and arivial. I am having my leaving party on Saturday and because of that I haven't started packing. When ever myself or my sister go anywhere for over a week (camp and now Disney) we lay all our stuff out on the dining room table. There is no point in me bringing everything down to the living room. If I am just going to have to bring it all back up on Saturday morning. Once the party is over I will start packing! I will be making a post about packing once I have finished. There are not a lot for the CRP program mainly for the dcp or the icp. I will make the post like how I wanted to see when I was looking at blogs. 

That's all for now! 

Have a magical day!! 

Sam

Banking problems...

So I thought once I got my medical insurance figured out that would be the last of my problems... I WAS SO WRONG!!! I went into TD bank today to set up an account because they have Canadian/ US branches. I thought it was going to be easy, walk in set it up. I could not of been more wrong! I was looking forward to switching to TD bank because I don't know why I just was! I am just going to explain the whole thing. It starts off with my mom as soon as I get back from camp. She wanted to switch my account right away, I said I wanted to wait. I wanted to wait until I bought everything I needed, so that way the money I had in that account was the exact amount I had once I got there. Then I decided not a good idea as I would probably be buying things right up to my arrival date. So today I walk into the bank, its a new branch and so its all nice and new and I was feeling good! I was thinking that this was going to work out exactly as I had planed I am going to get this account set up and I did everything correctly. I couldn't of been more wrong if i had tried! We talked to one nice man who directed us to someone else. I thought okay this is a good sign every thing is going as planed! Yeah I was wrong again. She said a cross border account was not a good idea because I am going to be living there for a year. She told me to open an account once I am there. I was thinking thats fine, I will bring all my money to the US and open an account and put all of the money in the account once I get there. Problem is my mom was going on about how she was going to do some money transfer into my account. I don't really understand that because she would be transferring canadian money and frankly that will not help me in america. She said to set up an account with american access would take about two months because the papers would need to be sent from the US to Canada and then back. Then I was going to sign up for something and put money in one account so when i get down there I can call and get it transferred. Sounded simple enough so I decided why not. This of course was after me asking my mom if she would be okay with me taking my money down there in cash not in a bank account. The lady who was helping us obviously looked stressed. In fact at one point she had her elbows on the table and her hands on her head. YOUR JOB IS TO TELL US WHAT WE ARE TO DO! HELP US, DON'T MAKE FUN OF US!!! It turns out I couldn't even make an account because I didn't have two valid pieces of ID on me. I had my licence and my health card, but of course they don't like health cards. Right that makes sense, a government issued OHIP card is a no but a drivers licence is okay? yeah makes total sense! Anyway I finally asked how close the TD was to housing at disney, turns out its a 15-20 min dive. That is if you have a car, which I don't I would need to take a taxi or a bus to get there. I have started to look into what other banks are closer and what other people on the program have gone with. I don't mind making the trip to the bank I just need to figure out how to get there. I also don't know if I need a social insurance card or not. I will figure it out, hopefully soon before it gets to close to my arrival date. It just sucks that I need to take my money down in person. I don't know how much I want to bring I know its a lot but I was thinking between 1-2 thousand. I want to have enough to get what I need when I get down there and have enough that if I am ever in an emergency I have enough money. I will figure it out soon though and when I do you will be the first to know, who ever you are!


Have a magical day,

Sam

DORMS aka housing registration

Disney has finally put something in place they have talked about for awhile now, or so I've heard. Anyway, more about the process. It was very confusing at first. Three weeks ago we got an e-mail from Disney and it had a link to the dorms site, but it didn't work. I was really confused as was everyone else. One of the tips I can give to someone who is waiting to leave is, if Disney sends you something that doesn't work you don't need it. We where all so confused and stressed about the links not working and getting everything done on time before we leave. Don't worry about it though, everything works out in the end. Earlier this week Disney sent out two emails from housing. It has all the information you need to fill out your housing requests. This is where you can tell Disney any roommate requests and your housing preferences. It is a really straight forward form to fill out. I said that I didn't care who I was with for a roommate. Mostly because I don't really know anyone under 21, there is one girl in my arrival group under 21. Well that I know of, and so we will probably be put together anyway. Disney tries to put people in the same apartment who have the same or close arrival dates. They do this so that if they want to the housing company can do any reno's they want and to have an entire apartment to fill with new arrivals. You can put down your top three choices for housing complexes and how many rooms you want. I had a tough choice deciding the order for my housing choices. All I knew for sure is that I don't want vista, it is the oldest and farthest from the other three complexes. What it came down to is a comment that was posted on a housing question on the Facebook group. He gave a short summary of all the housing complexes and it really helped me make my choice. The decriptions where: Patterson- newer, more expensive, walk to bus, no washer dryer. Commons: most expensive, washer dryer, sometimes annoying bus times, some apartments are small, lots of CRPS about, very close to shops and outlet. Vista: cheap, has a reputation, close to lots of stuff and good arivial times, largest for pretty party central. Last but not least, Chatham: close to bus, longest wait to go to Epcot apartments are pretty decent. Some of the things he said didn't make sense but it gives am overal idea of the complexes. Oh and by the way Patterson does have a washer and dryer just not in the apartment. The commons apartments are more expensive because they have the washer and dryer in the apartment. My final decision was the Commons, Chattam and then Patterson. I would be happy with any of those three but I would love commons. Not just because of the laundry in the apartment but because of how close it is to publix and the outlets. We will see what happens when I get there though! Overall the housing stuff is nothing to stress over. Disney has been doing this for so long that they know what they are doing, everything works out in end so just try and relax.

Have a magical day! 

Sam