Start at the beginning, and when you come to the end, stop.

Disney World! I went to Disney World! :D Here's how it all happened:

Friday, August 29th:
I "taught" in the afternoon. By "taught," I mean that I gave my students a group work assignment so that they could teach themselves for the day. Made class shorter, which got me to Robert's duplex earlier, which got us on the road faster.

We arrived at Jack's house, visited for a while, met Steven, Robert and Jack told me where we were going for our trip, and then all four of us went out to Sal Grosso, a Brazilian restaurant. So much fun--we ate so much food...almost too much food. When you're seated, they give you a card that's red on one side and green on the other side. The servers then bring out spits of meat as long as the green side is showing on your table. When you don't want a particular cut, you just flip it over to red. Soooo freaking good. I wanted to marry the filet mignon. Sorry, Robert.

After dinner, we dashed over to Wal-Mart to try to find ponchos, but to no avail. Jack and I were...hm...kept in conversation with a couple of rednecks, one of whom (the younger) had a laugh a little like Goofy. Jack and I had to bite our tongues to keep from being particularly rude to them. We left Wal-Mart, got back to the house, and crashed because we needed to leave for the airport at 5:30 in the morning.

Saturday, August 30th:
We awoke ass-early. I was extremely groggy and ready to roll back over until I remembered: DISNEY WORLD! I popped out of bed, threw on my clothes and dashed to the extra bathroom to get myself a little less gross. The drive to the airport was easy enough, as was the wait for our plane. The flight was fine, and extremely short--we played trivia, and by the time we got our drinks from the drink cart, we were making our initial descent.

Jack had set us up with a great resort called Coronado Springs in the park. They had an awesome deal where they gave us labels for our luggage--if we chose to put the labels on, the resort would pick up our luggage for us from baggage claim and take it directly to the room. The warning, though, was that the luggage may not arrive at the same time as we did. But, that didn't matter, because the rest of the package gave us a park hopper pass as part of our room key (as in...our room key was our park pass). So, we hopped a bus from the airport (bypassing baggage claim), went directly to the resort, checked in and got our tickets/keys, and then headed to the park via the resort bus. (When we checked in, we snagged some ponchos from the gift shop, a point which does become relevant by the next paragraph.)

We went to Animal Kingdom first because neither Robert nor I had been there before. The first thing we did was get some lunch at the Rain Forest Cafe--we sat next to the elephants, hehehe. As we finished our meal, we observed several people running into the restaurant, shaking off umbrellas and themselves--Gustav's arm had rested over Orlando and it was pouring. We donned our ponchos and braved the storm to go play in the park. We went on the Harambe Safari, which was a lot of fun; a dinosaur ride hosted by Claire Huxtable (hehehe); and Jack and Robert went on a Mount Everest-based roller coaster while I took pictures. After Animal Kingdom, we went back to the hotel for a rest, saw our bags had been delivered, and then later hopped on another bus to go to Epcot.

We ate dinner in Epcot because that was pretty much all we had time to do. Unfortunately, Disney World has made it damn near impossible to eat anywhere for dinner these days without advance reservations. Jack called the dining help line on a whim, and there happened to be an opening in France for dinner. So, we high-tailed it over there, and had our dinner. It was...okay. Nothing to be particularly snooty about. We had a rude Parisian as our waiter who insisted on making Robert feel like a horrible man...which, of course, pissed me off. We only tipped him half of the suggested tip. The food wasn't fabulous, the service was worse, and we left feeling frustrated but at least fed. They brought out an amuse-bouche before our dinner, of course, which they described as zucchini with a salmon puree and piece of shrimp. In fact, it was a slice of cucumber with salmon paste and a whole limp shrimp. Jack and I took two big bites of the cucumber mess and then drowned it in our water. Robert took one bite and nearly couldn't keep it down. The waiter refused to assist us until Robert polished off his amuse-bouche. Jack had to help him out. Please. It's not that good and what if Robert had been allergic? Ridiculous. So, anyway, if you're looking for an authentic Parisian experience (complete with rudeness), then yes, by all means eat in France at the World Showcase. At least we had fun walking the World Showcase at night while everyone else was leaving.

Although it rained for most of the day on Saturday, we had a lot of fun. And because of the rain, the lines were very short and there were few bratty children out. We truly enjoyed ourselves and were completely worn out when we got back to the hotel.

Sunday, August 31st:
We started out in Epcot because we had spent so little time there the day before. We also had a nice little perk with being in a resort that allowed us to stay at the Magic Kingdom for extended hours past closing. So we weren't in a real hurry to get to Magic Kingdom anyway. Today was not rainy, but it was a little muggy and cloudy. We didn't miss the sun.

The very first thing we did in Epcot was go to Spaceship Earth--of course! We had a great time and marveled at some of the updates made since our last visits. Next stop was Mission: Space, which was hilarious--we did the difficult course and laughed the entire time. It was great. By then it was lunchtime and we were starving, so we went to Italy for lunch. DELICIOUS. Much, much better than France. We played around in Epcot a little longer (I'm starting to blank on all we did because we did so much--Jack's photos on Facebook chronicle it very well), and then we hopped on the Monorail (much to Robert's delight) and headed to Magic Kingdom.

At Magic Kingdom, all the brats were out to play. There children who were being extremely unruly and misbehaving very badly in front of their parents. I told Robert that if our children ever behaved that way, I'd yank them out of line so fast and make them sit out. We went on Pirates of the Caribbean, of course; then Splash Mountain (aaahh!!); Space Mountain; Thunder Mountain; and Laugh Factory. Not necessarily in that order. So much fun, but I hate roller coasters, so I was a little...nervous about some of the rides. I did have fun, though.

By about midnight (only an hour or so into the extended hours), we were wiped out. So we got back on the resort bus and headed home to crash.

Monday, September 1st:
We woke up early-ish to catch the bus to the airport. We had the option of checking our luggage at the resort to have them bring to the airport, but we were nervous about when the luggage would arrive. So, we just brought it with us. Our bus driver was hilarious. Security was swamped but we eventually got through it; got on the plane, and then we parted ways. Jack went back up to her home, and Robert and I went back to Auburn. When we got back to Auburn Robert and I passed out.

After a little nap, we went to dinner with my sister and her boyfriend to celebrate her birthday (which was the 28th). I gave her her present from Disney World (a little Donald Duck pin), which she adored.

I took a lot of videos of the trip, so once I've got them downloaded and edited to look decent, I'll put them on YouTube or something to share with everyone.

Thanks Jack and Robert for such a special weekend!!! I had such a wonderful time, and I am so grateful that you two put so much work into it for me. :)