My wicked world Head in the clouds, feet on the ground, mind on food and heart on the road!

In the Dells!!!

After 5 grueling hours of riding a bus, I am deposited in Wisconsin Dells. At the station, a lovely lady asks me and the other 2 guys who get off the bus if we came for Family Land. It seems I am the only person, so after collecting my luggage, Karen (the lovely lady who soon turned out to be one of my bestest friends) drives me to my accomodation. While she is driving, I tell her all about my little adventure. When she manages to squeeze a word in (I talk, A LOT, some friends and even Mom told me I talk a lot), she asks whether I have ever been in an english speaking country. Saying I haven’t, she praises my Englsih skills (on the inside I was doing a happy dance, but being the modest person that I am, I just blushed and thanked her). Later I would find out, she was surprised an international (non-american folks) was such a chatter-box, when normally they would manage one-word answer to questions “are you tired?”, “how was your flight?”…Well, she was in for a surprise with me…the conversation went something like this “so how was your experience so far?….Well, let me tell you…” and I went on and on, and on….

We got to JetStar – our housing and finally relaxed. I was supposed to report to work the next day, get my gear, orientation and such. I was living in a room with a guy, Radek, from Czech Republic, who was quite nice and that night I met some other people : Joelle (who turned out to be another great friend during that summer), the Hungarians (a compact group, constantly having fun – great people) and other more. The next day, after orientation and getting my gear I was prepared to embrace the job….being a lifeguard – it even sounded important. We knew we had to be certified, but being in the medical business, it was no biggy for me. At orientation I met another guy from Romania, so we decided to room together (birds of a feather..you know). One night, before the certification exam, we decided (my roomie and me that is) to go to WalMart to buy bikes (it was a cool 45 minutes walk from the housing to the park). We buy the bikes and some other items, and get on our merry way. Of course, the tourist sense kicks in, and we get lost (retarded, I know), and to make matters more interesting, my roomies bike breaks. Not even 1 hour after purchase. So there we were, on a dark country road, one broken bike and thoughts of horror movies floating in our heads. Luckily a car stops and the guy takes us back to WalMart. We have to walk back to our housing (a 2 hour walk, no problem) and crash for the night, the adventure being too much for us.

Several days later, being a lifeguard already and learning the hard way what it means to work in the “people bizz” (surveying them, giving first aid if needed, helping them on slides), Ovi and me decide it’s time to take another job, to earn some more money. We land jobs in the housekeeping section of the park (basically it’s a resort – one HUGE hotel, with a water park attached to it), but I quit after 3 days due to health issues (I am allergic to the chlorine in the cleaners). However, luck seems to be on my side again, as I get a job at the reservations department of said hotel (taking reservations of hotel rooms on the phone), then working at the front desk. It was a great job, it paid well but at some point I was feeling dead tired.

Now, a lot of good things happened to me during that summer – had my first crush (which kind of hit me off field since I haven’t been with anyone till then), met some truly amazing people I can have the pleasure of naming friends (Dawn, Vlad, Karen, Joelle), attended cool activities (Family Land Olympics, the boat trip) and I think the most important thing – I got a tattoo (now, Mom would totally disagree with me that it’s a cool thing, especially after not talking to me for 2 weeks when I showed it to her) and a really cool one at that (yes I know it’s permanent, and no, I don’t get tired of it, in fact, next summer I’m getting another one – there), going on movie marathons with Nana, another great friend (actually it was more like pay 1 movie and sneak into 2 others).