Two Posts: A Flashback to a Week Earlier, and Thursday

Post #1: In Which Cinderannie Meets a Handsome Stranger, and Goes to a Parade

So I realized that I left out something fun that happened on Wednesday the 12th of September. This was the cast preview of the Mickey’s Boo to You Halloween parade. I was very excited about it, having never seen any Disney Halloween parade before. Marijka wanted to go too, and we decided to dress up. She put on her blue ballet costume, and ballet tights and shoes, and Dani, who works at the Bibbidy Bobiddy Boutique, did her hair in a lovely bun and put glitter in it. I was supposed to be a gypsy, but my attempt at layering skirts and scarves didn’t go as well as I was hoping, so I ended up just in all black (skirt and t-shirt) with an orange scarf tied around my hair.
While the two of us sat waiting at the bus stop, I caught sight of a nice-looking young man standing a short distance away. He looked pleasant and friendly, and since I was in an outgoing mood, I looked up at him and smiled and nodded in a greeting sort of way. He smiled back. I looked away, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he kept looking at me! Well! I was flattered.
About a minute later, having noticed a girl dressed up in a gorgeous, mermaid-like green dress, I went over to compliment her on it. This brought me closer to the young man I had smiled at, and after I had greeted the girl, he walked up and said to me,
“Excuse me, you are going to thee Halloween parrade?” in an beautiful accent I wasn’t sure of the identity of – it was like Spanish only more European.
“Yup!” I said with a smile. “The bus should be here soon. I’m Joanna, by the way.”
“I am Alejandro,” he says.
“Nice to meet you. Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Italy.” English steals that word of all its beauty. He said it, “Eetahlee” – which doesn’t look nice spelled, but try saying it out loud. Go on, do it.
Now I am not the boy-crazy ooh-and-ah type, but honestly… it took a little bit of willpower to not just melt in a puddle on the floor then and there. But I kept it together, kept what Michelle calls “the boy smile” off my face, and attempted to not look as though I was thinking “ooh, Italian!” because he probably gets that a million times a day. I just said,
“Oh, that’s cool,” and then the other girl said something to me and I was talking to her. He never said anything more to me, and I must confess I worry that I was unsuccessful in hiding my reaction and that he disappointedly assessed me as just another swooning girl. Rats.
The bus came shortly after that. Marijka and I sat toward the middle, and Alejandro sat toward the front. I didn’t see him after we got off the bus, and I haven’t seen him since, so who knows what happened to him.
On the bus Marijka was fretting about being the only one dressed up. I told her,
“It doesn’t matter if you’re the only one if you look good. It’s only weird to be the only one dressed up if you look goofy. And you look gorgeous. Just smile and look confident. You look amazing, so you can pull it off.” I think I convinced her at least partially.
When we got to the Magic Kingdom bus stop, from which other buses take us to the main tunnel entrance, I was surprised to see an enormous crowd. Normally you can just hop on the next bus to the main entrance, but we had to wait for three buses before we could get on!
When the bus dropped us off at the entrance to the main tunnel, I thought we would just follow where everyone else was going, but they seemed to all split in different directions, so I just thought, “Oh, whatever, I’ll just pick a staircase up and we’ll go from there.” Marijka was excited to get to see the tunnels. We came up around fantasyland, and were a little worried that we would miss the beginning of the parade, since it was a few minutes past when it was supposed to start. But I was hoping that since there was such a jam at the buses, they’d delay it until everyone got there. We hurried through Fantasyland – it was so weird to see it deserted! – until we got to Main Street, and were happy to discover that not only had the parade not started yet, there was a nice spot for us to sit on the curb and watch.
It was a grand parade – lots of characters, magical music, a band of skeletons, and candy at the end! One thing stood out to me that night, though, besides the magic of it – all the characters dance. Characters who are just on a float in the regular parade, dance in this one. I may as well confess to you all now that I do treasure dreams of someday being a character. And now I knew that if it was going to happen, I have to learn to dance. I would have thought this was an impossible dream, because I always thought of myself as being no good at dancing, but there were movements that I couldn’t do at all in the beginning of my Voice and Movement class at Cornerstone that I can do very easily now – so I can improve, with teaching and practice. How far I can improve is another question, but I’ll never know if I never try.
After the last of the parade went by, Marijka and I thought we would go back out the way we came and beat the crowds – but the security people said everyone had to go out the main gate. Since there was no beating the crowds anyway, I did what I had always wanted to do – I followed the parade, all the way down Main Street, laughing and dancing to the music all the way. For a while Marijka stayed on the sidewalk, but then she came and joined me. As we were coming to the exit, we found Abby! We hadn’t even know she was there. So we got to ride the bus to the Magic Kingdom bus stop with her. From there, the bus back to the apartments only comes once every 20 minutes, and there were a good many more than one bus’ worth of people there. Oh dear. The first bus we just let go – it was hopeless to try to get on it. We were going to try for the second bus, but it was no good. It was getting very late, and Marijka had to get up early for work in the morning, so Abby and I encouraged her to make a dash for it and get on the next one, and fortunately she made it. Abby and I took the next one after that. And, as seems to happen to me rather frequently, I ended up sitting next to a guy who talked my ear off the entire bus ride home. Although his conversation was more interesting than some.
Given how late we went to bed, I was glad that I had the next day off – which was the day that we all went to downtown Orlando. So now you know one of the reasons for me being inspired to take the ballet class.

Post #2: In Which Cinderannie Buys Presents for her Sister, Cinderella, and Attempts to do Ballet

On Thursday the 20th I went shopping for Lydia’s birthday for most of the day. First I went to Cast Connections, the place where cast members can buy overstocked and discontinued merchandise for a large discount. It was cool, but I was disappointed by the lack of Princess things (Cinderella is Lydia’s favorite). So I left there and took the bus to Downtown Disney. Now this was fun. I may hate shoe shopping, but shopping in a place as cool as Downtown Disney, when you are free to spend guiltless money for someone who you know will like what you get, is grand. I had so much fun picking them out.
Toward the end of shopping I was getting hungry, and I had seen a stand with “churros” – long cinnamon sticks that you can dip in hot fudge or caramel. They looked amazing, so I bought one, with chocolate sauce. Wow. It was really, really, good. I highly recommend them. As I was finishing it and walking back toward the bus, I saw one of the stands that’s everywhere advertising the Disney Vacation Club. They’re promoting it a lot, and I was curious about what it was, so I went to take a look. They man working there came up and asked if he could help me – in a nice, meaning it way, not a “what are you doing here” kind of way – so I said I was just trying to figure out what it was and how it worked. He told me all about it. Basically, you pay a lot of money (I mean a LOT of money), which purchases a share in Disney real estate, and then for 50 years you can stay for about a week once a year free at any Disney resort, anywhere in the world. So if you were a young family, and you were going to go to Disney a lot in the future, and you had that much money (ha), it would eventually pay for itself, and be really cool, plus you could use it with your children and grandchildren. Coming up with the cash in the first place (it’s like $16,000) would be interesting, though…
When I got back, I had just time to grab some supper and dash around getting ready to go to ballet. Abby and Marijka both had other things they were doing that night, so it was just me. I left with just enough time to make it there, which was foolish – I got lost again. So once again, there I was, arriving at the building 20 minutes after the class started, feeling stupid. But if I’m ever going to get a character role, I have to learn to dance, and I wasn’t going to put off starting another week. So I took a deep breath, got out of the car, and walked into the building and upstairs to the desk. There I told the lady I was here for the adult class, explained that I had gotten lost, and asked if it was still all right if I went in.
“Sure, they’re still on barre [the first part of the ballet class],” she said. So I paid my money and went in. As I was coming in the door, the teacher saw me and gave me a bright encouraging smile, so I felt better about going in.
The barre exercises were pretty much what I was used to from my other class, although she did different combinations so I had to really concentrate to follow along. Then we did the crossing-the-floor combinations… oh dear. They were the difficulty we did at the end of my Voice and Movement class at Cornerstone; about two steps beyond where I was at the height of my ballet class. If I had just come out of that class, I could have picked them up all right, but being three months out of practice it was a bit of a disaster. At one point I had the impulse, “You can’t do this at all, just leave and go home,” but my thoughts instantly replied, “No way! I am not giving this up after the first time! How am I going to get better if I don’t do it?” So I stayed. It is frustrating, because this was the combined beginner/advanced class, and the beginner class would be better for me but it’s on Monday nights and I work Monday nights. But hey, if it’s over my head, that’s good, because it means I have opportunity to get better. The only thing is, at my class in GR I was comfortable enough with the teacher to ask her after class to show me certain things I didn’t get at all, and she would always show me until I got it, and seemed very happy to do it. But I am too shy to ask this teacher, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick them up without slower instruction. So maybe tonight, when I have ballet again, I will get up my courage and ask her to show me one step I don’t get. And if I ask her for a step or two every night, eventually I’ll get somewhere.