To New Adventures

The year 2017 has come and gone. This past year has flown by rather quickly, but it has been packed with a lot of adventures. Some adventure highlights include going to Disneyland (twice!), getting selected to be a facilitator at Disney University, training with the Marines in Morocco, starting a new position as a housekeeping manager at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resorts, being activated for deployment, going to to Salt Lake for Grandma’s funeral, and now on deployment in Central America. An adventurous 2017 indeed!

I took a little break from writing over the holidays, but I know that people are curious what’s going on these days. Since my last post, I was completing pre-deployment training until after Thanksgiving. By the way, Thanksgiving was pretty nice because me and a couple Marines got to go to Walt Disney World to celebrate. We stayed at Disney’s Port Orleans Riverside Resort for about four nights. Having never stayed there before, I was impressed by the landscape, seclusion, and exciting activities that this particular resort had to offer. Shout out to my Cast Member friend, Morgan! She and I lifeguarded at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground and Resort last year. We both did not like guarding there. It was good running in to Morgan while I was staying over Thanksgiving. Keep doing great things, Morgan!

Still talking about Thanksgiving, we got to do a lot of things and see a lot of thing while we were at Walt Disney World. One of the coolest surprises was at Pandora: The World of Avatar when going to get food at Satu’li Canteen. On Thanksgiving Day we were low-key hoping to have some sort of traditional Thanksgiving meal, but no luck. I mentioned that one of my favorite restaurants is in Pandora and they have a really good bowl meal. Well, when we got there they were serving Thanksgiving dinner bowls! It was a Thanksgiving miracle! The rest of the trip was fantastic. I got to see several of my peers from work as well as from the Contemporary (where I used to work). It was truly a pleasure running into our housekeepers while walking through the halls.

Unfortunately my Grandma on my dad’s side passed away just before I was to fly into country. I went to Salt Lake City to be with Grandpa and help with funeral things and rituals. My Grandma was a Buddhist so we had to be present for a week of daily chants for her. She had a lot of people who cared about her and took care of Grandpa. We had Thai food pretty much every day!

Now I am in Honduras working as part of Security Cooperation in Central America. The weather is comparable to that of Florida for the most part. We didn’t really go off base to explore when we originally got here, but since arrival we got to see Star Wars! We’ve had a couple of cookouts in our housing area to celebrate a birthday and the new year. I was originally under the impression we would be in a pretty rough environment (similar to Morocco) while we were here, but we are on a US instillation. It’s small, but it still facilitates a few basic American pleasures. We get to choose from a few restaurants that are owned by locals. We, of course, have a chow hall too. 

Thank you to all of those who have been praying for me. Pray, obviously, for safety. Pray for Honduras, the people, and the government here. Please also pray for health of our entire team as there has been some sickness already. If you are still reading this, thanks! I never know who actually reads these things.

Well, that’s it for now. Hope this was an exciting read for you. Looking forward to new adventures in 2018. Thank you for the support and for the prayers. Until next time: Be strong. Love God. Love others.

rejoice.always