Magic Kingdom 2.0

I can't live in Florida and not go to the Disney parks especially when my boyfriend works for the company so I still can go for free :). Well today we went to Magic Kingdom.  We first went to Einstein bagels for breakfast (had a buy one get one free coupon!) and spent the rest of the morning at Starbucks using the internet to apply for jobs. But around 3pm we headed over to Orlando so we could spend the rest of the day there. Since it's still early part of the summer it wasn't too busy yet.  We went on all the rides we wanted to go on but it was about a 45 min wait for all of them except the new 7 dwarves ride-the wait was about 2 hours. That wait was worth it though! It was a super smooth roller coaster!  I took some pictures throughout the afternoon:

New part of Fantasy Land-Can you recognize what move it's from?  Tangled :)

Francisco and I in front of Rapunzel's Tower.  Another guest saw us struggling to take a selfie so she offered to take the picture, I think she did an awesome job :)

Magic Teacups. Love this ride :)

Us on the ride

Toy Story ride/game.  So much fun.  You get to shoot at targets as you drive by.

We ended the night with Wishes, the firework show.  we didn't such a good angle to see the fireworks because we were in front of a big tree..but we got a great view of the castle when it does the pre-show.  I shot a video of a new part and its a song from the new movie Frozen

Daytona Beach

We decided to finally visit the beach after two weeks of me living here as an official Floridian resident.  The last couple weeks on my days off we were running errands to the DMV and to other places to make sure everything was set up correctly.  And it was not cheap! It cost me a good $450.00 to get new plates, driver's license, and title change to my car! WOW I am so poor on top of the gas and other moving expenses..But I am working as much as I can so hopefully I can get some money back into my account.

Anyways, we drove to the beach for low cost-relaxing day.  Neither Francisco or I had ever been to Daytona Beach, so that was our destination for the day.  Daytona Beach is about an hour drive from the apartment.  It was fairly busy for school to still be in session around here.  But we had a lot of fun.  Francisco drove, and we were able to park on the beach so we could have access to our car all day long.  We layed out and swam in the ocean for about 4-5 hours and then walked around the boardwalk.  The boardwalk was nothing special.  All the stores sold the same items for the same price just different store.  But it was still a different experience and got us out of the apartment for the day.

I however, got super super burnt.  The burn in Miami had nothing on Daytona.  I used SPF 50 every hour even though the directions said it was good for 80 minutes.  But I don't think the sunscreen worked.  It wasn't expired and I just bought it the week before, but something wasn't right with that bottle.  I was so burnt I couldn't sleep on my stomach or back for 4 days and I had to take advil for the pain of my shirt on my shoulders.  I am writing this post 3 weeks later and I still have some peeling.  It was a very horrible burn.  But the day was still fun even with the burn.

You really can't see the extent of my burn in this picture but I was VERY red.

Rewind

Hi, my name is Erin and I have a blog that I have neglected.  A quick summary of the last year: I have been non-stop busy.  Let's see...the last time I updated, I just finished my second semester in the Early Childhood Studies Program at NIU.  Since then I have completed two more VERY busy semesters.  Let me give a recap of the last couple semesters.

Fall 2013:
I moved in with a great friend, Tienique.  She is actually the girl I went to Miami with in the last post.  She was a wonderful roommate.  We didn't get to see each other much because this was her last semester before graduating and my last semester of course work.  We were busy! But I still loved sharing my home with her and I wish our 6 month lease didn't go by so fast but as life does it came and went.
My cohort and I took a full course load of classes including clinicals in a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade classroom on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  I had the amazing opportunity to work in a 2nd grade class.  The school was amazing! My teacher was amazing and the students were absolutely wonderful!  I fell in love with this age group.  They were so intrigued over everything you taught them.  I had a blast working there.  While I was also a full time student, I was trying to work full time.  Basically this equalled me having no life.  I don't think I was able to work a complete 40hours a week but I averaged at least 30 each week.  This was one of the toughest semesters for me trying to find time for everything.

Spring 2014:
If I thought last semester was busy, I didn't even have a clue of what I was about to get myself into for my final semester before graduating.  I was student teaching. The way my program works is that we are split 8 weeks in a preschool setting and 8 weeks in an elementary classroom.  In my first 8 weeks, I was placed in 2 different preschool classes AM and PM with two different teachers.  It was a very interesting setting but I fell in love with the kids and it was hard to say goodbye..but the drive was awful.  I was driving almost an hour and half both ways every day in the midst of a very horrible winter in IL.  My next 8 weeks I was a lot closer to home student teaching in a school about 10 minutes from my house. HOW LOVELY! I was in a classroom with 23 3rd graders.  These kids were just awesome and full of personality.  My teacher threw me in super fast but it gave me more experience and helped me warm up to the kids even faster.  I had a blast in both of my student teaching experiences and I miss all the kids I was able to teach for the last 16 weeks.  

But that leaves me here...Graduation.  After 5.5 years of college I finally saw the light and I graduated.  I received my B.S.ed with an emphasis in early childhood education.  I graduated summa cum laude in my class with means my overall program gpa was above 3.9/4.0 scale.  I am beyond thrilled with myself for finally completing my schooling, even if it took me a bit longer than my peers to finally figure out what I wanted to do.

These girls came out and celebrated my birthday

Courtney and I as Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 for Halloween for our 2nd grade classrooms

Learning how to make musical instruments out of recycled material

Tienique and I in our apartment on her graduation

My whole cohort. This was our last day of undergraduate class

My best friends at our graduation

Road trip!

So here I am..just graduated college and I'm moving to Florida!
We packed my car up every last inch! I'm not sure why but I forgot to take a picture of all my stuff but I'm not kidding you, my car was full!  The drive was long. It took us (Francisco and I) two days.  We left around 8am Tuesday morning and arrived at his apartment around 8pm Wednesday.  We did stop around midnight on Tuesday to stay at a hotel.  If I could of reclined my seat in my car we could of slept and took turns driving but it was a cramped car so it was very hard to get any shut eye.  I didn't take many pictures but I got one of the welcome center in Florida (we still had 4 more hours to drive once we got to this point).  It was funny I got a picture of the welcome sign and we stopped to go to the bathroom and 5 minutes later it was Florida raining.  And it was a nice down pour for about 10 minutes and the sun came out and we were back on the road.  I will never understand that rain.  But it was a pretty smooth drive.  And I am officially here!

And I finished semester 2!

So..It has only been like 6 months.  But I finished semester 2/4 of the early childhood studies program.  What a stressful 15 weeks!  I finished with a 4.0 though and on the Dean's List for the second semester in a row.  I am pretty happy about that.
Let me sum up what I have been up to for the last few months:
In January, before the semester started, I ended up taking a spur of the moment trip to Miami to see my NIU football team compete in the Orange Bowl.  We lost pretty badly but it was still a lot of fun.  I went with my soon to be roommate and I got to meet up with a friend from Disney!  So even though I was only in Florida for a total of about 48 hours I had a lot of fun.

New Year's Eve in Miami with my friend Tienique

Here is us at the beach

At the game :)

Then the semester started, I was with the same group of gals from last semester and I even had a couple of the same professors.  However, I feel like the work load was intensified by about 10.  Somehow I managed to get all the projects and papers done.

My cohort

For spring break in March, I decided to fly back to Florida and visit with my friend. It was a lot of fun and a much need vacation, even though I didn't do too much while I was there.  But I can honestly say I missed the state a lot.

Mikaila and I on St. Patrick's day

After spring break, more course work.  I didn't have any clinicals this semester (as in I didn't get to work with kids) but I do think I learned a lot of beneficial info.

Working on the background for a puppet show!

May crept around the corner and we had finals.  I was barely hanging on o one of my A's..actually I was pretty sure I was getting a B in my multicultural class but when Mid-May came around and grades were up.  I was jumping for joy! First 4.0 since I started college.. About time though right?!
Anyways,  summer hasn't been much fun.  I have been working 40 hours since class got out.  However, I have been getting trained in other areas of the store.  I am getting pharmacy trained as well as front end attendant (kind of like a managing position) so I have been keeping super busy.
Hopefully some time this summer I can at least go up to the city for a bit or even go to Lake Michigan.  But until then I will be trying to work as much as possible to start saving for next spring when I will be student teaching and not able to work at target.

Well that is a quick summary of my past semester.  Not too much!
Until next time,

Erin

First professional semester-FINISHED!

It has been awhile!  I don't even know if anybody will be checking this, but my first profession semester as an early education college student is complete!! It has been a long and hard road.  Probably one of my most difficult semesters yet..and I didn't even have a science course!
To sum up my semester, I took 5 classes and one 8 week clinical.  My classes were all 3 hours long different days of the week, and my clinical was working in a preschool classroom with amazing little 3-5 year olds and 2 teachers.  I am so excited I choose this degree..the 8 weeks I was in the classroom was super crazy but I have never had so much fun learning and being able to interact with the kids.  Don't get me wrong they were crazy to control most of the time, but in the end when you saw them finally be able to write their name all by themselves after practicing every day for weeks is really an awesome feeling.
It has been super cool going to my classes this semester because it is the same group of 16 girls in all my classes so we became pretty close and worked on all of our homework and projects together.  I have never had such a big study group! So it was nice being able to bounce ideas off each other! Also they will be with me til I graduate in May 2014 so it will be nice knowing the people in your classes like I did before college.
I have also been working on average 20 hours a week at Target, lately its been more like 25 hours but gotta make that dough for Christmas!  Target is crazy busy with the holidays but it makes the days go by fast.  I also was guest service trained so that was really exciting for me since I have been only Starbucks for so long.
At the end of the month I will be heading back to Florida, to Miami because my NIU football team is playing in the Orange Bowl! So there was a student package to go to Miami-all inclusive deal for 160! which I thought was too good to pass up! Plus I will get to see one of my old Disney friends when I am there, she lives in Ft Lauderdale which is right next to Miami! I cannot wait! I am going with one of my best friends here at NIU and then we are staying in a room with my coworker and her friend so I think its gonna be a blast!

Well thats about it for my update,  I haven't really taken any pictures in the last couple months so I will just leave you guys with an update for now :)

Hope everyone else had a great couple of months too!

Back to Dekalb

I know I'm no longer in the college program with Disney but I thought I'd keep this blog going.. I probably won't post as often because I'm going to start getting really busy with school but everyone in awhile I'll update you on my life-post Disney.
Yesterday I moved back to Dekalb. I have been commuting for the last week back an forth from work and home but now I'm in my little 411 sq ft studio. It's kind of cute though! I just finished un packing and putting up my decorations- well I still have a little more to do but I'm not sure when I will get around to do it. So I decided to out pictures of my apartment almost all the way cleaned, with exceptions to a few boxes and papers on my desk.

Good-bye Disney :(

Today was my offical last day with the Disney Internship College Program.  We had to be moved out before we left our apartment because our keys had to be turned in.  We also had our "graduation" today as well.  So if you know me at all, I did wait until today to pack all my stuff and I went to the graduation.  It was a very busy 10 hours :)  But it was a lot of fun and my roommate and I packed our stuff together so it was great last roommate bonding time :)  I am definitely going to miss Amanda, She was a wonderful roommate.

I got my Ears! 

Amanda and I with our Ears :)

Mikaila and I in our ears :)

Us again looking spiffy in our dresses and not in costume :P

We are all from Chicago and met on the bus to go to the hotel the very first night.  

Oh hello Pluto! You're looking good in the graduation hat!

I can't end the day without a picture with Mickey and Minnie!

I had taken many more pictures with my roommates nice camera but she hasn't sent them to me.  So if I ever get them there may be an edit to this post.  

Good-Bye Grand Floridian!

Today was my last day working at the Grand Floridian.  Right before work it started Florida raining.  What I mean by Florida raining is that its almost clear skies but its pouring and it pours for about 5 minutes and stops.  Then it will start again 10 minutes later.  And the roads flood in seconds.  But as soon as the rain stops the water disappears. Its actually kind of crazy.

Right out my apartment window.  

Ready to go to work! haha :)

This is on the bus.  The puddles were so deep that when the bus was driving this is all we saw out our windows. Our waves were soaking every car we passed.

Mikaila and I.  The only original college program kids left.

Mikaila, Lauren, and I.  Lauren is our culinary on the cold side of Gasparilla's.  Gonna miss her!

Me, Mikaila, and Yvette.  She is such a lovely lady!  She is a wonderful person to talk to.

This is Pamela.  She is an international college program.  She is from China! She is such a silly girl!

There are so many more co-workers that meant so much to me and I didn't get a photo of.  But as cheesy as it sounds, the people I worked with side by side for 8 hours every day became my Disney family.  I am going to miss them.