S.O.S- Smile On Stage

WOW! This is my first blog post since I arrived at the Walt Disney World. I love here, absolutely LOVE working for Disney. Walt Disney World really is a place where dreams come true. I love seeing all of those princes and princesses, and I can create happiness for them. Disney is a magical place, because you can be goofy/dorky/nerdy, as long as you are happy. As a cast member here, we create happiness for you :)

It has been an incredible experience so far, because I feel I'm already learning a lot. The most important lesson I learn this week is to smile. One of the four key principals here at Disney is Show- the entire Disney is a stage, and we need to be show ready all time. Obviously, as part of being show-ready, we need to smile on stage and provide the world class guest service. To be honest, there are times I dread going in work. It has been quite an adjustment for me to go from a student to a full-time cast member here. After working for Residence Life for one year, I thought I have had experiences with fire drills and the most ridiculous situations. But apparently not the case at Disney. This week, I had to deal with a group of 1300 teenage girls from Argentina who barely speak English. They had no idea what they were doing most of time, such as they pulled our fire alarm on the first day they moved into our resort. Those girls don't speak English, so they feel like they have the rights to be rude and have no manners. I had a hard time not to be mad, but I would go backstage and get myself together. It is Disney, and our guests are from all over the world and it is quite an experience for me to learn to communicate with all of them. I had to ask for help to translate or hand-gesture most of the time. No matter what, they are our guests, and the most important thing is to smile. It is magical, because all you have to do is a simple smile, and everything can be different. Next time, try to call a little girl princess, and she'll give you the biggest smile, it will brighten up your world! 

While I'm busy with creating happiness for our guests, I actually create happiness for myself. At Disney World, we give out "First Visit" "Just Engaged" "Happy Birthday" "Celebrating Anniversary" and many more pins. Whenever I walk by any guests wearing those pins, I would shout out happy birthday, have fun at your 1st visit, happy engagement or happy anniversary to them. They will smile back at me, and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. This week, I saw a girl who was wearing a Happy Birthday pin in our resort. I asked my manager if I could get some cast members together and go sing happy birthday to her. My manager took a group of us new cast members, went to get a cupcake from the kitchen, and we went to the front and sang for the birthday girl. She just turned 3 years old, and she was kind of shy while we were singing. She's the most adorable princess I've ever seen, and she was so happy. We created a magical moment for her, and I hope she'll remember this very special birthday at the Walt Disney World. That was the best time I had at work, I created happiness! Like Walt Disney said " you can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality," it feels absolutely magical to be one of those people :)))

SoulPancake: Five Year Old

So…for people who haven't heard of this book, SoulPancake, it is about chewing on life's biggest questions.  SoulPancake was originally founded by actor Rainn Wilson of NBC's The Office and his friends, Joshua Homnick and Devon Gundry in 2007. The book was designed to pose life's biggest questions about Arts, Sexuality, Religion, Spirituality, Creativity, Philosophy, etc. If you don't know yet, I'm OBSESSED with all of the pictures and questions in this book. It is an unique way to think about my life. With that being said, the question I'm exploring today: What do you miss the most about being five year old?

Honestly, I'm so youthful and childish. Most of the time, I admit that I'm actually only two year old, because I'm still in love with Disney Princess and Winnie the Pooh. No matter how old I'm becoming, how much I've grown, I'm still a little girl who cries about every happily-ever-after fairytale. But the reality doesn't lie, and I'm still growing older. But if you ask me what I miss the most about being five year old, I want to say it is that happy, simple life with my loving my parents I had. When I was a child, I had nothing to worry about. My mommy and daddy took care of me. Now my life has become more and more complicated, and stress has sneakily entered. Life was never easy, and never gonna be. But it's worth it. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed. Even so, we can never forget always being like five year old. Remember that time when all you know is smiling and being happy? YES. That's the attitude. And whoever is happy will make other people happy too. As we grow older, we have more things to worry about and we forget to smile and love. I miss being five year old and have my parents around me. Because I didn't realize leaving home happened to me that fast, and I had only lived with them for fifteen years. I love them. And now I realize that the most important thing we can do as humans is love each other, pure and simple. No rules, no labels, no outside forces...just love.  

LIFE…is a big question

Life is a BIG question, because it takes so much time to discover what we really want to do and who we really are. For some odd reason, I have been thinking so much about life and education in the past 2 weeks (maybe because it's finals week, and more or less, I'm a little overwhelmed). 


As a future educator, I truly believe education is not a preparation for life, eduction itself is life. But recently, I started questioning why I'm in college and what's the point. Our society has put too much emphasis on getting a college degree, a Master or even PH.D. It seems to be the ticket to get any job, and that is exactly why we all are obsessed with mass schooling. I call it mass schooling, because it is a system that the product is the same, and we are just graduates. Our education doesn't encourage acceptance or uniqueness. Professors and teachers just throw information at students, and as long as we can memorize or digest the information, we'll be good students and ace the exams. SO…why am I here at school? What am I really getting out of my college education? Education should be different. I'm not saying our education right now is completely wrong and need to be thrown out of window. Education should be more than what it is now. It should encourage students to ask life's big questions, empower them to do bigger than they are, and inspire them to make a difference in our world. 


Right now, I just feel somewhere else in this world is calling my name. Call me crazy (well, I work in Wheeler Hall, that kinda means I'm super insane), but I have this urge for something bigger in my life or a change. I want to drop out of school, join in Peace Corps and spend a year or two in Africa. The problem with me right now is that I realize I take too much satisfaction from the jobs, material things and the titles I have, but I don't know what I REALLY want. People say sometimes we have to lose to gain, we have to let go to receive. I want to drop everything I own right now, go somewhere in Africa where there is no any technology or the things in our modern society. All I can do there is volunteering, hanging out with those kids who really need me, and making a difference there. Maybe by doing that, I'll figure out who Sue Li really is and what life really means.