*ALL VIEWS ARE MY OWN AND NOT OF THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY, CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY OR YUMMY JOBS*
Hey there, pals!
I hope everyone had an amazing week last week and thank you so much for your lovely comments on my previous blog post! I had so much fun writing the post and being able to relive some of my favourite memories from my Disney Academic Exchange Program so far. If you haven't already, make sure you go and check it out - obviously after you've finished reading this week's update ;) So, here goes:
After a few busy weeks at fairy week, things have abnormally slow! Even my fairy classmates were surprised. Across the last six months, I have always been rounding things up at fairy school once our study days are over. To my disbelief, I started off my days with fairy school instead of finishing my days with fairy school! Again, fairy classmates and leaders were in total disbelief at my unusual timetable for fairy school!
In my last blog post, I talked about how I experienced my first taste of the American culture by trying my very first Pop Tart and celebrating my very first Thanksgiving. Now, it was my turn to pick out something from the British culture for my American friends to try and educate them about UK holiday celebrations and traditions. Collaboratively, my fairy classmates and I made a promise that I would bring in my British tea bags and Cadbury's chocolate for them to try. Internally, I was secretly excited to see their reactions and get their opinions on the things that I call home.
I had a very spontaneous hang out with another friend from fairy school. Literally, I woke up and received a text message asking if I was free. We started off in Epcot to visit the International Festival of the Holidays – the second of the four festival celebrations at Epcot. We walked around and saw all the different traditions in the various pavilions and rode the Grand Fiesta boat ride in the Mexican pavilion, met Anna and Elsa in their epilogue outfits and Soaring Around the World. Afterwards, We travelled to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and we rode Primeval Whirl, which I missed riding this attraction on my last vacation, DINOSAUR, watched Festival of the Lion King, and grabbed some food from Satu’li Canteen in Pandora before watching the Tree of Life holiday edition projections.
As well as my American friends having their first taste of the British culture, the other most exciting news of this blog post was that my family were on their way to Florida to visit me! Trying not to contain my excitement, my body naturally woke up at 6am (EST), which just so happened to be the estimated departure time of my family's flight over to Orlando. Just as my family did with my flight over to Orlando, I followed their flight across the pond! And, everyone at fairy school was asking me for updates on how close they were to landing in Florida!
*I totally was not looking at the flight tracker like every hour to see how close they were to me 🤫*
Once they had landed, my instant thought was that they were going to secretly surprise me straight away after collecting their belongings from the airport, even though we had already agreed that we wouldn't see each other for another 24 hours. This never happened.
The next day, I could feel myself getting more and more nervous with each hour that passed by wondering when exactly I would reunite with my family at fairy school. I gave them a rough timeframe for them to come to fairy school, so they could meet my fairy classmates and vice-versa. Time passed and I still hadn't heard anything from my family, so it was just a matter of waiting until their arrival. I was in complete shock to find out that my fairy classmates had been looking out for my family and arranged our very special reunion. When my family and I saw each other for the first time in forever, all of us were filled with so much joy and emotion because it had been such a long time since we last saw each other face to face.
Once we had all calmed down from the initial shock and had a long overdue catch up, I got to show my family around fairy school, which was very special to me. That evening, I travelled with my family to Epcot, as they had a couple of FastPass+ planned for the four of us. Unfortunately, things did not quite go to plan. We decided to ride Spaceship Earth instead of Mission Space - after the last experience I had on Mission Space, there was no way that I was doing that again. And our other FastPass+ was booked for Test Track, which was temporarily closed because of the weather. So, we rode Soaring instead because my family had never experienced Soaring Around the World before. After the day's events, as a family, we decided to call it a day.
The reunion that I had with my family at fairy school was everything I could have imagined and more and I cannot wait to give them their Christmas presents that I bought for them when we celebrate the holidays as one united family.
And I am going to call it a day with this blog post. Thank you so much for reminiscing home with me this week. I have so many more exciting holiday adventures with my family, so stay tooned!
Have a magical day!
-Hannah
DISCLAIMER: this blog is my personal experience on the Disney Academic Exchange Program (DAEP) 2019-2020 and may not reflect everyone’s experience. Other programs and future participants on the DAEP may have slight adjustments to their programs that may not be featured in any of my blog posts. That being said, if you do leave any questions, I will try to answer them as best as I possibly can 😊
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