Florida Fun

So this may potentially be my longest post ever, but we'll see... I haven't even gotten to the end yet! Simply loading the pictures took me 2 days because I only had a little time in between classes, track, doing homework and church.

I make myself sound so preoccupied, but seriously this has been such a relaxing week compared to the ones before. It's true, with God's peace, you can feel blessed in any circumstance.

Speaking of circumstances; they have been awesome!!! I've paid my last ginormous rent this past weekend because I FOUND A ROOMMATE! She's been quite cooperative and quiet so no complaints yet. Another great thing that happened this weekend was the trip to Disney, Florida for the track meet.

To be honest, I left for Florida with a heavy heart because even though it was an all-expenses paid trip (and they gave us 65USD for pocket money), I simply wasn't looking forward to being around the noisy freshmen 24/7 for 4 straight days. Also, I was stressing out about the championships that we were supposed to run on Saturday. It was the most important meet of the season for us and I really wanted to do well for personal reasons.

Anyway, I'll let the trip speak for itself with pictures (a thousand words each) and my own two cents here and there...

We flew on Thursday afternoon, leaving the cold smelly Jersey air behind.

Below, the black river winked its eyes at me.

By the time the plane arrived in Florida, the sun was already saying its last goodbye.

Our hotel rooms were alright. The beds had cheesy-looking bedsheets but at least they were clean and tick-free.

We took turns hopping into the shower then got dressed before venturing out for dinner.

The girls had already made the place feel more like a dorm room.

Since we didn't have the chartered bus to take us out of the Disney compound for cheaper food, we had to settle for dinner at a restaurant within the resort.

I wasn't too excited waiting for my overpriced food. I was hoping at least that they'd be American-sized portions.

In the meantime our two other tablemates were occupying themselves with Paulina's Iphone.

The place was decorated to look Southern, rustic, and yellow. It made me tired.

Turns out that our food portions were measly Singaporean-sized portions. I ended up paying 42USD for an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. Even afterwards, I was still very hungry, but I didn't want to order more because I would've spent all my money. As you can see, there aren't any food pictures because I was feeling so ravenous that I gobbled up all my food before you could say "waffles are for playing with, not eating". I think my brain shut down during those few minutes that I was stuffing food into my mouth.

We could've gone out for a romp or two, but I was feeling quite drowsy from the dinner and it was getting late anyway, so we went to sleep. I decided to take the foldable cot, but since the thing was close to breaking, I took the pink mattress off the metal and laid it out on the floor instead.

Then I konked out.

Next morning, my coach decides that it was necessary to wake us up at 0630 to have us eat breakfast at a BUFFET place right BEFORE practice at the race venue afterwards.

At first when I got there, I told myself that I wouldn't eat too much because I didn't want to feel nauseous while running afterwards. However, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bear the thought of me being at a buffet and not eating as much as I could for 9USD.

So I grabbed a plate. Then another. Then I grabbed four bananas and stuffed them in my shoebag for later. I wanted to grab more but everybody had finished eating already and were getting up to leave. I was quite upset.

This is my coach. We have been driving each other up the wall so far this year.

Louis decided that his knife wasn't clean enough and gave it a few more washings.

After the morning jog on our race venue, we went back to the resort to get changed. The sun was already halfway up and we got to see our surroundings in daylight for the first time.

I'd give it 7 stars out of 10 for serenity.

After a quick shower, we were off to Disney's....

Magic Kingdom! Walking from the entrance of Magic Kingdom to Cinderella's castle would've probably only had us walking about 800m. However, because of the fact that we had three girls with three cameras, the trip there ended up taking approximately 20 minutes instead of the 10 it was supposed to be.

Once we got in, the realities of the magic hit us.

LINES! lines and more LINES!

I revisited a fond friend of mine. The last time I saw Minnie was (I think) back in 1997 in L.A.

Had a tea party in her house for 2 brief seconds.

There were too many children running around. I know I know.. I was once a child like them too, but they are SO annoying!

More waiting.... mostly for Paulina's sake because she was the most excited one of us three, always wanting to take pictures with this, that and everything.

At least we had nice weather. It was slightly chilly but definitely better than the 1 Celsius we had left behind in Jersey.

We went on every single enjoyable ride possible.

We were careful to choose the ones that had a height requirement because that meant that the ride was probably at least a little bit thrilling.

Definitely enjoyed Space Mountain!

It's a small world after all! This was one of the rides that I vividly remember being on in L.A.

We were getting a bit high from the sun and the fun.

Got tired so we took the little train around the park to rest our legs.

Oh yes. we were there on Friday, which was 31st October, Halloween! Almost everybody in Disney that day had a costume on. I had so much fun looking at all the costumes.

For the first half an hour that is.

Then I realised that all the little kids were dressed as either a Disney princess, or a Disney cartoon character. It got boring after a while.

One of the many princesses.

I almost let out a sigh of relief when i saw that this girl wasn't a Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, or Belle (from Beauty and the Beast). Something about her made me think that she should be a Disney character herself.. I like the dress. Very cute.

This was quite funny to watch.

Cinderella no. 1278493.

Of course, we couldn't leave Magic Kingdom without visiting their main people. But you know what stinks?

On Disney advertisements, they always show the characters walking around the park saying hi to the kids. But in reality, they are locked in some little room and you have to wait in line for about 30 minutes to even take a picture with them! It seemed very staged and I missed seeing the characters walking around like they were in Disney L.A..

Since I'd waited a good 30 minutes just to take pictures with these two, I asked them to do an Asian cutting board pose with me.

I didn't want to wait in line to take pictures with Donald without his pants on, so I just snapped a shot of him from the sideline.

So we were almost on the way out from Disney when I see Snow White walking around, and.... THERE WASN'T A LINE AROUND HER! I happily asked if we could take a picture with her, only to find out that she wasn't REALLY Snow White. She was just dressed as Snow White for Halloween that day.

HAHAHA~!

Duped! But seriously, she was SO pretty. I think Disney should just offer her a job.

I didn't take pictures of the rest of the night because I pretty much spent it in bed, having a fever. The sudden drop in temperatures once the sun set sent me ducking under the covers and turning the heat way up in the hotel room. I really thought I was going to die.

Next morning my fever went down, but I felt so drained. Still, I didn't think it would affect me that much for the race.

WRONG!

I had the stamina alright! But my strength had been sapped dry. I felt so weak that I couldn't speed up when I wanted to go faster. I felt so tired, useless, unhappy, miserable and disappointed. I didn't even tell my coach that I had a fever because he would just take it as an excuse on my part for running a horrible race.

Oh well. Things happen. I can only pray that they never happen again.

But once it was time to leave Disney's Wide World of Sports, I felt a whole lot better mentally just knowing that the cross country season had more or less come to an end.

Other teammates were obviously feeling better too.

His job done, our school's trainer could now kick back, relax, and enjoy the rest of his stay at Disney.

Everybody took a million pictures I'm sure. Still waiting for them to go up on Facebook.

It wasn't too sunny but at least it was warmer than the day before.

With the rest of the afternoon to ourselves, we decided to go to Animal Kingdom. It was exciting and all until we had to wait 20 minutes for the stupid bus to arrive.

Tamara just amused herself on the phone.

But finally we got there... whew. At this point I was really tired and still feeling weak, but I told myself that this was Disney anyway and I'd better enjoy the rest of my stay here.

It was on to Dinosaur land first for the rides.

The ride was so lame.

So lame.

So lame but I really enjoyed it!!! And look at Tamara being all freaked out by the dinosaurs. We're on the bottom right of the picture and she's in the yellow shirt.

We went for a second ride and this time I knew where the camera was so I posed. Except that Paulina's arm was in my face.

Such a cheesy looking dinosaur.

Went to Asia for a ride on Everest. It was ok.

Off to Africa where we were held up by some parade.

The characters were enthusiastically waving to the crowd, but nobody in the crowd really waved back. It was strange. Another thing that's really weird for me is the fact that there is an actual person inside that costume. Somehow I can't take the characters seriously because of that. Call it my overactive imagination (or lack thereof), but it just reminds me of Mars Attacks!.

Poor Goofy. You see this poor dude inside is obviously getting sick of his job. Under that mask he is probably frowning and pissed off.

Timon kept scratching himself down there. Was it part of the act? I don't really know.

Obese America: even Donald Duck's belly is feeling the bulge...

So while the girls were busy sifting through the gift shop, I was feeling really tired so I decided to sit outside and wait for them. I was sitting next to a popcorn stand and the popcorn lady kept throwing popcorn to these two birds. It was pretty cute watching them argue.

Later that evening the whole team got dressed up and ready to leave for the MAAC Championships dinner. It was nice to see Brian again (Brian graduated this May).

Louis looking all smart in his getup.

It turned out that before dinner, there was Mass. Oh, and not just any other Mass. It was a Catholic Mass. That's all I have to say, you can tell from my tone what I thought about it.

Oh, the dinner and Mass were held in MGM, or Hollywood Studios as it is known now. They had reserved a whole section and shut down the Rock N Roll coaster especially for our conference. This meant 7 coaster rides in a row for me and 10 for some others.

I actually packed the smallest bag out of the entire team. As a result, I was unprepared for the dinner and had to borrow Paulina's skirt. I wanted to take a picture by myself but Louis and Danny jumped in for ASIAN PICTURE and I thought that was an even better idea.

The boys were all high and giddy from the coaster rides and food.
Eventually, it was time to leave.

But even as most of the team turned in, I wasn't ready to go to bed yet. I mean, come on guys! Now that the meet is over and you have one last night in Disney, you don't want to go to the hot tub???????

Whew at least some people were game to go.

I knew we weren't going to have the opportunity to jump into an outdoors hot tub in Jersey for the rest of winter so I took my time to enjoy it.

Later we all got kicked out because the other drunk college kids were making too much noise.

Then finally, it was back to Dirty Jersey.. Bye bye fairytale land, hello cold stinky reality.

On hindsight, the team wasn't as rowdy as I thought they would be and I actually ended up enjoying the majority of my time there. I would definitely want to return to Disney someday with just a bunch of close friends.

In the meantime, God has been good to me. Very very very very very very good.

I just did my laundry and cooked some Russian борщ. I just had some and I think this is my best one ever!

Goodbye. I guess this wasn't my longest post ever because I started out with a lot of things on my mind, but right now my mind is quite empty along with my stomach (which itself has a lot of things on its mind... if it has a mind at all... which I think it does...)

Byeeeeeee