In Which Everything Changes

For anyone who doesn’t know and hasn’t heard (which might by this point be no one), I am extending my college program until May – my new departure date is May 16th. I think I will tell everything of importance pertaining to the transition between apartments and jobs as it happened.

On January 3rd, I worked from 11:30 until 8:00. It was my eighth straight day of working, and the 4th of January was moving day, to a new apartment. When I found out that my schedule was going to be like that, I had planned out when I was packing and when I was sleeping, and as a result I was not horribly sleep deprived and had most of my things packed. I knew I would be up all night, however, because I and my roommates were all going to go out for supper, and then the custodials were going to Perkins at 1am after the closers were done with their shifts. Which meant that final packing and cleaning would commence at 3am. Yeah.
I called Tiffany, the girl who I met at the winter formal, to ask if she still wanted to be roommates. The answer was a very enthusiastic yes, so we agreed to meet at my apartment at 10am the next day. Check-in was to begin at 10:30 and we wanted to get there early for a better chance of rooming together and staying at Chatham.
When Nic came home from saying goodbye to a few of her friends from work, at around 10pm, we discussed where to eat. It was Nic’s birthday, so she got to choose, and she wanted to go to Earl of Sandwich. (It took us a while to decide because it was cold out and at first we weren’t sure we wanted to walk through downtown Disney when it was so cold.) When we finally decided we left in a flurry because we had just enough time to make it to the restaurant. Fortunately we made it in time and had a very delicious meal.
When we returned we were all packing, and not to much later I left and went to Perkins, where I joined all the other custodials. We took up an enormous table, there were about 30 of us, and we were rather loud. It was fun, except we were all kind of sad. I got lots of people’s Facebook names so we could keep in contact.
I was one of the first to tear myself away, since I knew I had lots of packing to do. I said goodbye to everyone. The hardest to say goodbye to was Ian, because he was the only one that I was really close to who wasn’t extending. He had been a wonderful encouragement to me, both by talking to me and helping me with closing trash runs. So I said goodbye to him, and to all the others, and went on home.
Most of the others were asleep. I just went on packing, and it went on forever, and finally it was nearly morning. Then we all got up because at 6:10 the shuttle would come to take PJ and Kara and Marijka to the airport. So we all went to see them off, and PJ and Kara and Marijka and Nic were all crying, and I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. Then everything got ridiculously confusing because we were there waiting and then a bunch of other people came who were also supposed to take the 6:10 shuttle and there wasn’t nearly enough room on the shuttle for all those people’s luggage and we had told the man that there were four of us (PJ’s friend was going too) and he had that in his head, and wouldn’t listen to us when we tried to explain that we hadn’t know about the other people, and he didn’t speak much English. I kept feeling like this was the part where you go find the grown up, except there wasn’t one. We were the grown ups. Ugh. Usually that sort of thing happens on a youth trip and then we go find Don, or Doc Carroll on the Greece trip, and then he comes and makes everything work. But eventually the man said that they would send another shuttle very soon for the others. So we sent off our friends, and walked slowly back through the dark to our apartment. Abby had driven, but somehow Nic and Dani and I wanted to walk anyway – it was like we needed the walking time to adjust to their departure.
Most of the others went back to sleep after this. I continued packing – slowly but surely, I was finishing. And at 10am when Tiffany showed up at the door, everything was packed except the food items (which wouldn’t fit in my car).
We went over to registration, and waited in line for a long time, and met a guy who neither of us remember his name, but we talked the whole time. And then we checked in, and requested a three- or four-bedroom apartment, on the second or third floor. Happily, they had one for us, a three-bedroom on the second floor. After we had gotten our pictures taken for our new housing ids, and completed other assorted paperwork and paraphernailia, we were able to start moving in.
The afternoon was chaotic and stressful – I still had to go back and get all the food items out of my apartment, do some last tiding, and put away all the food items – and then there was the pile of things that filled my whole side of the room. The comforting thing was that Tiffany has a similar personality to mine, so her side of the room was also completely full of stuff. It was also nice that she was very confident in herself and comfortable, which meant she could both say something friendly to me when we ran into each other and not leave me feeling “uncool” and out of it, and not feel the need to make small talk and ask me questions when I was running in and out. She made me feel at ease without “trying to make me feel at ease,” if that makes any sense. But also I lost my keys along the way, which was a problem because I needed to turn in my old apartment key. I thought they were dropped in my stuff somewhere, but they didn’t seem to be, and then I thought they must have been left in my old apartment so I went back there. A cleaning team was cleaning – fortunately the man was the accommodating, friendly sort, and looked up brightly when I entered. When I said it was my old apartment and that I thought I might have left my keys, he said,
“Oh, I did see keys!” He hastily dug into the trash bag on the counter, saying apologetically,
“I’m sorry, they told us to throw everything away,” and pulled out my keys. “They were under the couch cushions.”
“Thank you so much!” I said, and, surveying the amount of assorted junk that had been left in the apartment, said, “I’m sorry that we left so much stuff.”
“Oh, it’s all right, this was way better than a lot of them,” he said. “If there’s anything else here you forgot or want you can take it.”
Gratefully, I dug through the things on the counter and in the trash bag, and found my Eeyore mug that I had just bought! Along with a few other things I thought I might still want. Thanking him again – he even grabbed me a plastic bag to put the things in – I left, much happier than I had been and very grateful that I had been spared from the just deserts of my disorganization.
That evening, Tiff and I went to the apartment of the guy we met in line and watched Pirates 3. That movie is much better the second time. The first time I didn’t understand it very well. And then the three of us had a very interesting theological discussion. It came up because the apartment was creeping him out – when he had arrived the entire place was filthy, dirty dishes and trash all over, and he had found a notebook full of bitter, angry writing, and now it just felt, as he put it, “dark.” So that got us onto the concept of religion in general, and from there into what Tiff and I believed. He was very open and curious, and I hope that we get to talk with him again.
The next day was more unpacking and organizing… and I’m going to skip ahead a bit to the next things that are interesting. Actually, come to think of it, it wasn’t until the next day that I went to get my key. Yikes, maybe it was even the day after that. Oh dear.
Actually, I’m going to skip back a little bit, to something important that happened while we were checking in. When I came up to the last table of checking in stuff, the lady asked me,
“Have you heard from your new position yet?”
“No, not yet,” I said. I knew I was going to be working in one of the restaurants, but I didn’t know where yet – not even which kingdom or resort. I was hoping to stay in the Magic Kingdom – Cinderella’s Royal Table was my first choice, followed by Liberty Tree Tavern. I very much hoped not to be banished to a dull restaurant at a resort.
“Well, they should have contacted you. You might hear from them today, but I’m going to look them up here and get them to give you your training information.” She began paging through a booklet of papers that listed names and locations looking for my name.
“Wait, does that mean I get to find out my new location now?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. Just then she found my name. I read the words at the same time she said them –
“Liberty Tree Tavern.”
“Yes! Yes yes yes!” I cried, jumping up and down. She smiled, and I have no idea what she said because I was too excited. Just something along the lines of “you should hear from them soon.” And indeed, I received my training schedule via e-mail very soon.
So there is the account of me moving. I’ll post again tomorrow with what’s been happening in the mean time, and about my new job – there’ll be a good deal more Disney magic in the next post, so you’ll have to bear with this duller one.