Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Worthwhile experiences

So a few interesting things have happened since I last updated! Plus one that I forgot to write about during my last update that I will tell you about riiiiight.... now.

We have these adorable monkeys called cotton-top tamarins at DAK and they are adorable.

They're one of the animals we stand by to talk about with the guests and not give out a Wilderness Explorer badge. Anyway, one day recently when I was there, the keepers came out and did some training with them, which was really cool. I learned an interesting (and somewhat adult) fact about the tamarins from the keepers: when they aren't on a breeding plan, the females require the same dosage of birth control as an adult human would. By the way, the tamarins weigh about one pound. So yeah. They're good at having babies.

A few nights ago most of the Presenters went to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for a team building event. We got to have dinner at the lodge, and then we did a "Cultural Safari" with one of the Cultural Guides from Africa. We learned about their program and then he told us about South Africa, his home country. It was really, really interesting and the Guide was very nice and funny. We then went to some of the savanna overlooks to see some animals. We tried to use night-vision at one spot, but there weren't many animals. We did see some giraffe and zebra at another spot though, so that was fun. The Lodge overall is beautiful and I'd really like to go back during the day and do some activities with the Cultural Guides and see the animals in the light.

One day last week when I was standing at our Headquarters location with coworker Cali, the Vice President of DAK (!!!) came up and introduced himself. He asked how everything was going, and he mentioned that he got an email about some of the problems we've been having, and said he's going to start talking with the right people about getting the bugs worked out. It was really nice to hear, and he seems like a guy who's genuinely interested in what's going on in his park.

Yesterday I found out that Android (and Apple) has a free phone app called DuoLingo that gives mini language lessons in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German. So I'm going to learn all those languages, in that order. I'm about a fourth of the way through the Spanish lessons, but it's all stuff I did back in 8th grade, so I'll probably slow down as I go through it. But it's really good practice to get my brain thinking in Spanish again.

Finally, an update on my pin obsession. Here's a picture of my collection as of tonight:

You'll notice a lot of Bambi because it's Bambi. I'm sort of fond of Haunted Mansion pins, as it's my favorite ride, but I like some of the older sets more than a newer ones. I really like my "DOOMBGY" license plate, and I found a matching "SPACMTN" one tonight. The one with the giraffes is a 15th Anniversary of Animal Kingdom pin, so that's really nice. And the one with Stitch in the bottom corner has a Komodo Dragon on it!! The pins on the cardboard are ones I'm not willing to trade; the ones on the lanyard I'm not as attached to. Basically I just like pins a lot. I'm attempting to make my own pin bag, so I don't have to display them on cardboard, but I will update on that as it progresses.

And to end, a couple of pictures.
Big Thunder

Tehe!

No comments:

Post a Comment