Safari So-Goody

Hello again! You're probably shocked to be hearing from me again so soon! 

Now I'd like to insert here that there is going to be a lot of mentions of boats in the post you are about to read. At jungle, we spell boats "botes" because of a certain joke. I will not be doing that because auto correct does not like the word bote. 

I decided to make a list of weird things that happen quite often at jungle that you wouldn't expect to happen very often. So here it is. 

Five things that happen at the jungle: 

1) Somebody comes up to me and starts speaking fluent Spanish thinking I understand them. Now you probably aren't too surprised at that, but it is surprising how many people ask if I'm from Brazil. Apparently Julia is a very popular name there. 

2) I get a boat full (or at least half full) of people who don't speak any English. The whole time they just loudly point out all the animatronics, especially "Elephante, elephante!!!" All. The. Time. 

3) I get a boat with a person who thinks they're funny and either finish my jokes or respond weirdly to them. This doesn't happen to me as much as it sounds like it does to others. But it does happen and a couple of times it's been a fun person that I can joke with, but other times it's just annoying. 

4) So this one calls for background information. When we load or unload people from the boats, we hold our hands out so people who need help can just grab our hands. When little kids get in or out of the boats, I lower my hand so they can grab it easier. Kids always think I'm offering my hand for a high five. Always. I've also had an old Italian man kiss the back of my hand. People are weird. 

5) One of my favorite things is entering the temple. I don't speak in the temple because it echoes too much, so I think people feel awkward with the silence and decide to point out what's happening in there to their kids/parents. Well, the tiger is the first thing we see in there, and at least once a day I hear someone say "look! A lion!" It happens all the time. It makes me laugh every time.  

Now here's a list of really good things that have happened recently:

1) I got two "you're fired" slips in one day! I don't know if I've explained those to you, but if someone gets off your boat and tells someone that you did a good  job, we "fire" the skip. The joke is that you're not supposed to be funny or good on the jungle cruise so they need to be fired. It happened twice in one day though! I do have people tell me personally that I did good while they're getting off my boat, but they usually don't say anything to someone on the dock. I was just really happy about that. 

2) Sometimes people who were sitting in the back of the boat will get out and walk around to the front to talk to the skipper in the boat. These two little kids came up to me and said "thank you captain skipper". It was SO cute!

3) After one of my cruises that people laughed but not that much, this little girl who was sitting right next to me gave me a hug. It was so sweet. 

4) My roommate Holli came and rode my boat the other day. She could not stop laughing at my joke in the hippo pool. That made things hard for me because I couldn't stop laughing at her laughing at me which made it hard to spiel. But now she keeps talking about how funny my boat is which is relieving to me that she wasn't just being nice. 

5) There were these girls who seemed like they could have been cast members on my boat the other day and I overheard one of them saying "I love her" after one of my jokes that they laughed quite a bit at. I like to listen to what people say on my boats while I'm spieling. 

6) I did park clear last night which means that I stood in a spot and sent everyone without wristbands for the Halloween party out of the park. I had been hearing horror stories about people being really rude and angry and yelling at you. As you can imagine, I wasn't really look forward to that. Well, I had no problems. It was actually kind of fun. Not like a treat shift, but it's just fun to be in the Halloween party atmosphere. Everyone was really nice and understanding and usually, they already knew and I just sent them to the fastest exit. Well there was a group of black ladies who looked like they might get angry at me when I told them they couldn't stay in the park. Here's the interaction I had with one of the ladies: "hi guys! Are you going to the Halloween party tonight?" *insert worry about their answer* "no we are actually just leaving" *relief* "great! Well your fastest way to exit is actually going to be this way" "thank you! I like you" *even more relief* "I like you too!" I think that might have actually been one of my best interactions of the night. There was a little more to it than what I wrote, but that's basically what happened. 

7) There was a great boat a had a couple of days ago. This was probably the best boat I've ever had. I think there was only like one group that wasn't laughing. And there was one particular group who were all loud laughers (which is the best). At the end two of them told me that they had never seen someone do all of the jokes I did and it was great. Now, the boat I was in was one of our slower boats which allowed me to use most of my jokes. But it was nice and they liked it.

8) Probably my favorite thing that has happened here was after a great cruise and an older man came up to me and said that he's been on the jungle cruise quite a few times and I was the best skipper he's ever had. I don't think I was able to convey my gratitude to him well. It meant so much to me. 

These things are pretty little, but they make my day every time. And I definitely have plenty of bad boats, but I've found that at the jungle, if you stay positive and fun it is much better, more easy, and more fun for everyone. I have coworkers who hate jungle, and I think it's because they're always looking for the bad and not having fun with it. They also don't like interacting with guest which I love. One of my favorite things to do is stand on dock and say goodbye to everyone leaving. I also like being at load because we get to talk to the guests while the next boat is pulling up. I also love greeter because your whole job is welcoming people and talking to them. I really just love interacting with the guests. 

So earlier this week Chloe texted us and said that she got audited at work and Dannah texted back and said "wait, what did you audition for?" It was HILARIOUS to me, and I got a little carried away... here's what I said: "I think it was an audition for the hit musical "Safety: it begins with us" it's about a band of resort custodians who have a self discovery and realize that if they want to stay safe, they need to look outside themselves. It's truly inspirational. I tear up a little just thinking about it. I hope you got the part Chloe!" And then Chloe said "I think my rousing rendition of "This Is More Than Just A Code V" got me the part!" Killed me. 

Annie's birthday was on Saturday which makes this week birthday week. On Thursday (I think is was), Annie had a rough day at work and texted us to come get ice cream with her. I was the only one who was able to. It was a lot of fun. On Friday, we went to the Polynesian and had pulled pork nachos. We were on the bus at midnight, so we had the whole bus sing happy birthday to her. On Saturday, Annie and I went to magic kingdom and met Cinderella and Elena. Then we went to Epcot and ate at this Italian place that she had been wanting to go to. They had really good pizza and pasta. Then we met Snow White. After that, I had to go to work. After work, Annie and I ate cake and watched emperors new groove. Tomorrow we're going to Tony's for lunch as roomies. We might do something for dinner too. On Friday (the last one) Chloe decorated the apartment with streamers and balloons. She also made a delicious cake and then shaped it like Mickey Mouse. Annie loved it. Can we also talk about how fantastic Amy did on that picture for Annie. I'm going to go pick it up now and give it to her tonight. I'm so excited for her to see it!! Thanks again Amy! 

My friends are coming this week and I am so excited to see them. Shayla, Jasmine, Diana, and Robyn are coming. It's going to be so fun! Speaking of Robyn, did you guys hear that she got her mission call? She's going to Chicago, Illinois English speaking! She is going to be such a great missionary. I'm so excited for her!!

I am having a great time here. I'm eating and drinking (mom and dad) and partying (everyone else). I am still so excited to be an aunt! I see little babies and think "hey we'll have two of those soon." I love you all and hope you're all doing well!

Now get out. 

Oh sorry that was rude. 

Please. Get out.

PS-  this post was from October 17

No Rules at a Hurricane Party

(This is a post from October 11 that I copied onto here)

Hello all of you beautiful people on the dock! Great news! Your post's here. Bad news, I'm the one who's writing it. But that's ok, read it anyway. (In case you're confused, this is what I say about fifty times a day but with boat words)

First and foremost, can I just say how excited I am to be an aunt? I tell everyone. I shout it from the rooftops: "Hey everyone! I'm going to be an aunt times two!!" I'm just so excited. 

So the hurricane. Was that crazy or what! There was a lot of "everyone be prepared this is going to be really bad." Annie and I went to Walmart on Thursday and it was CRAZY busy. There also was basically no food. There was no bread, no canned foods (except the gross kinds), and very little snack foods. While we were in Walmart, they announced that they would be closing Walmart at one o'clock. That's right CLOSING WALMART. Were we going to make it through this storm? Was anyone? If the two world powers of Walmart and Disney were closing, you knew it was going to be horrific. Annie still didn't know if she had to go to work or not and we were thinking if Walmart closed, why would Annie still go to work. We found out later that she didn't which was very happy. So Chloe works at the Grand Floridian and her boss asked her to be a part of the hurricane ride out crew which meant she stayed at the hotel for two days and helped over there with whatever they needed. That was sad because it meant she wasn't with us, but the rest of us were home for two days. 

Our first step was getting everything ready for this horrendous storm. People had made a big deal about not taping the windows because it wouldn't help anything, and because they had made that big of a deal over it, we expected the windows to shatter at any point. We moved pictures and some furniture into the bathroom and closet so they wouldn't get ruined when that happened. Then we were ready to party. Hailee still wasn't back from work which was making Holli pretty worried, but don't worry, she made it back before the windows shattered. 

Now the first rule of the hurricane party is that there are no rules at the hurricane party. This mostly pertained to the hurricane snacks. And yes we did say hurricane in front of basically everything we said. 

Before Hailee was home, we started our hurricane party off by playing this game that Annie and I got at the Vista Way library. Then we played hot lava throughout the apartment. Annie even put on intense music while we were doing it. Then we switched over to lava monster and had Holli try to tag us with her eyes closed. After this, it was time for the fort. 

We were very into making this fort amazing and it payed off. I think that this was the best fort. Ever. About halfway through building our fort, Hailee came home and was kind of surprised to find our apartment so beautiful. So after our fort was finished (complete with Christmas lights) we entered with our hurricane snacks and watched Monsters University. We were also expecting the power to be out for like three weeks, so we were charging all technology and using it while we could. There were a lot of hilarious memes on Facebook about eating all the hurricane snacks before the hurricane came and things like that that we were relating to perfectly. After our movie, we decided to get ready for bed.  

Now you're probably thinking that "get ready for bed" means brushing your teeth and getting into bed, but you'd be wrong. Let's go back to the fact that our windows were going to explode in the middle of the night. When this happened we didn't want to be in our beds that were right next to the windows now did we. Especially because the worst of the storm was supposed to hit from two to eight. So we decided to sleep in the closets. We were going to be so safe in there. Three of us went into one closet and two in another. And just to be extra cautious we had food and water in the closet with us. As you can imagine, I did not sleep great, but that's ok because I wouldn't wake up with glass in my face right? Well I woke up in the morning and decided to go see the damage. I wasn't sure if I should wait until the others were awake or not, but I needed to get out of that closet. Well you can imagine how surprised I was to see how TERRIBLE EVERYTHING.... wasn't. That's right folks. I slept in that super safe super uncomfortable closet for nothing. I looked out the still intact window and it wasn't even raining. It was a little windy, but not even that bad. 

When everyone else woke up they felt the same. What? The windows didn't shatter? Are you sure someone didn't just fix them in the middle of the night? As you can imagine, there were many regrets. At least now we never need to wonder what it would be like to sleep in our closets. Annie and I talked about how we were sad that we didn't stay up to see the storm. In our fort we could kind of hear the wind but not super well. And as you can guess,  we could not hear anything in the closet except our fear of broken windows and tears of unrest.  

On Friday, we just chilled in the morning, but later that night, Annie and I walked to the store to get brownie mix. We came back, made the brownies, made another simpler fort, and watched titanic while eating our brownies. It was a beautiful hurricane party. 

But can we talk about how awful the timing of this lovely hurricane was? Thursday was the day the park closed early, and that was the day that we were going to go to the Halloween party and Be Our Guest. Then on Friday I was supposed to have a treat shift. But the good news is that Chloe and I switched our tickets to a different day, and Chloe was able to find a Be Our Guest reservation for that night which is insane because you can never find those reservations. Tender mercies. 

Jungle is going well. My coworkers are great and the new rotations are working better now. I love interacting with the guests and making magic for people. There was this little girl on one of my boats today and at the end she told me that I was funny (it was a lot cuter than just reading it). I just love knowing that for some people, they're going to be making a list of their favorite parts of their trip, and I'll be on that list. I like what I'm doing and I like who I'm doing it with. 

If you enjoyed your post today my name has been Skipper Julia and this has been the world famous Julia's blog. If you did not enjoy your post... well names don't matter that much now do they?