Year of the Forest and More!

Hello again! Here's a summary of what I've been up to during the past week or so.

Wednesday, July 27th: Today was DAK's celebration of the International Year of the Forest! We had a ton of fun special events going on at Conservation Station, and the presenters who were scheduled to work the KDC that's right next to it got to also help with the events. I was one of the lucky few! I helped out with two different stations. The first was a scavenger hunt for forest animals. There was a big backdrop, in addition to some logs, trees, and rocks where critters were hidden. After the kids found all the animals on their card, they had to match them to their habitat. Then they got to take it home and use the other side as a "backyard bingo" scavenger hunt that they could do later. At the second station, we had a three-paneled poster set up, and it depicted a mangrove forest, boreal forest, and tropical rainforest. We had 15 toy animals, and the kids had to match them to whatever home they thought they belonged to. Then they had to explain what adaptations made it possible for them to survive in those conditions. Although I only got to staff these stations for an hour, it was so much fun, and I hope I get to participate in more special events like this again!

When I got home that night, I found out that my bungee jumping picture that I took in Baños, Ecuador was one of the runners-up for the Juniata College photo contest last semester!! I was SO excited! It made it onto page 3 of the Juniata Magazine!!! Yayy! Check it out here.

Thursday, July 28th: The highlight of my day was getting the Cast Member discount at Chick-fil-A for dinner. Buy one meal, get one free! Alright!!

Friday, July 29th: I got some pictures printed at Wal-Mart, although it took forever. When I got home, I hung them up all over my wall. My room feels a little bit more like home, now.

Saturday, July 30th: Nothing really exciting happened today haha.

Sunday, July 31st: I tried out my new pedometer for the first time at work. It's pretty sweet because it counts the steps I take, converts it to miles, and tell me how many calories I burn. It also allows me to set a goal and tells me how close I am to completing it. Today, I walked over 10,800 steps (3.422 miles) and burned 343 calories! From now on, I'm going to see how much I walk every day and compare each letter in our rotation.

Monday, August 1st: I continued watching a bunch of Christian Bale movies because I absolutely love him, and I'm still really jealous that he's currently in Pittsburgh filming "The Dark Knight Rises" and I'm not there.

Tuesday, August 2nd: Today I finally got my hometown name tag! Now instead of it saying Juniata under my name, it says Pittsburgh, PA! Woot!

The best part of the day was when I was at the Cotton Top Tamarin exhibit. A little girl (maybe 7 or 8 years old) randomly came up to me and handed me an orange hibiscus flower then walked away. It was soo adorable! That's another one of those moments that makes me love my job.

Wednesday, August 3rd: I was at Dinoland in the afternoon, and one of my managers came to observe me so she could take notes on how I was interacting with the Guests. Of course, I happened to be speaking to a family entirely in Spanish. I did my best to give them most of the regular information and also explain to them how the KDC's worked. My manager also stayed around for me to talk to an English-speaking family, thank goodness. Afterward, she told me I did a great job with both interactions! I feel like I'm definitely getting more comfortable talking to people in Spanish, but I'm going to try to expand my conversations as much as I can each day.

That's all for now! Next time, I'll talk about my awesome day at Magic Kingdom when I met a ton of characters (basically the best day ever)!

"It's not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me."--Christian Bale