general updates

Thanks to Dr. Henderson, I am interpreting the High school Sunday school class for a girl named Louise. It's pretty exciting. The biggest problem is that she only knows SEE Signing(signed exact english) and I'm learning ASL. Two totally different signing systems. SEE signs use a lot of initialized signs, and some of the signs that aren't initialized are the same as ASL signs, but have different meanings. The sing for "sin" in SEE signing is nearly the same as the sign for "argue" in ASL. I'm a little bit worried. The biggest think I'm worried about is, obviously, that I'll confuse the two, and start using SEE signs in a conversation in ASL(Louise's parents said she knows enough ASL that using ASL signs with her is not a problem). The other problem is that SSE signing is looked down on in the deaf community because it's not a "real" language like ASL is because it's taking English and conveying it with your hands, whereas ASL has it's own sentence structure, and grammar, etc.

Aside from that,I have now had three days of training at Disneyland. I get to operate Star Tours, which is kinda perfect, cuz I love Star Wars. :) The first day was called Traditions. It was basically a big overview of general instructions. Day two was "guest interactions" day, where I walked around the park with my trainer and got used to talking to the guests, pin trading, and answering general questions. I also got to spend a couple of hours reading the general Operations Guide for park emergencies, and parades, and the codes I need to know, etc. When we were done with the training part we still about an hour and a half left before we could clock out, so we went on some of the rides(well, actually only space mountain and Sleeping Beauty Castle walk through) and got to see how the Star Tours shuttle moves(we got to go into the pit and look at it from the bottom. It's pretty intense) Today was actual ride operations training. The worst part was that I had to get UP at 3:45 am in order to be there by 5. (it only takes about 20 min. to drive there, but they have us park a ways off then just shuttle us in, so you have to leave time for taking the shuttle) I learned how to open and close the doors, what to say, how to make sure the shuttle is ready for takeoff, how to group the guests for entry(called grouping, go figure) how to work the turnstile, how to greet people when they come in the front door, and how to work in the tower(mostly just watching the monitors to make sure all the guests are ok, this also includes knowing which ride stop to use should I need to stop the ride) all this took about 8 hours. I then came home and crashed. The rest of my day has been homework, not too exciting, but a nice break from the hectickness(is that even a word?) of this morning. :)