It's a small world after all...

Wooo interview day!! I am absolutely shattered, but at the same time quite awake... I've been up since 4.30am (I will go into explanation mode in a minute!) so please excuse any spelling mistakes and typos! Oh and beware, this is going to be a loooong post!!

Ok, so last night I got home from SJA at about 9.30pm and after calling Mum, checking email, having a shower etc. it was about 10.10pm before I even started straightening my hair. Once I had done that I decided to head for bed at about 11.15pm (my hair takes ages...it's a bit uber frizzy). I felt like a child the night before Christmas day... that strange sort of suppressed excitement which if you think about it too much then won't let you go to sleep :-) Eventually I fell asleep and actually didn't wake up until 1.30am when two of my housemates decided to get home (noisily) and talk (noisily) and laugh (noisily) in the kitchen. Which is right next to my bedroom. Yay. Been a little bit louder and they may have woken the whole of Bournemouth :P I don't really mind that much because to be fair, they had forgotten I had to get up obscenely early this morning and 1.30am isn't really THAT late...anywhoo they went to bed about an hour later and I fell into dozey, random and pretty rubbish sleep until my alarm gave me a heart attack at 4.15am.

I decided that to make sure I didn't fall back to sleep, I would set my alarm for 4.15am, then my phone for 4.30am and 4.45am just to be on the safe side! As it turned out, I only let it go off at 4.30am because I then got up. The house was bloody freezing... I'm a student and students do not get up before daylight has broken!! It felt way to early to eat so I just got up, got ready and made sure I had all my documents together. Seriously, if I had (God forbid!) lost my bag, someone would have stolen my identity within minutes... I had my passport, photocopies of my passport, spare photos, original birth certificate, photocopied birth certificate, proof of student status form and even a bank statement, payslip and my students loan letter!! Anyway, luckily I kept it very safe all day :-)

So I drove to the train station and parked my car very convieniently for only £2.50 for the whole day. Waited for the train which arrived on time and it was almost empty so I got a seat facing forwards which is always nice... to be able to see where you're going! It was quite a quiet train until Southampton Airport Parkway where it was like invasion of the suits! I swear every single person was wearing a suit, tie and briefcase. They all sat down and got out their Financial Times with their little polysterene cup of coffee. Loads of people went to sleep as well so it was nice and quiet. Bear in mind it is still only about 6.30am at this point, and still dark!

The train journey went without a hitch (for once) and I got into Waterloo at 7.45am. Then the wondering started. Maybe I should have been slightly more prepared to find the restaurant in which they were holding the presentation and interviews! I wandered almost up to the London Eye before realising that was completely the wrong direction, after asking a random guy I went the opposite way and then still couldn't find the restaurant. When I was wondering around I saw this girl and she looked as lost as I did and I wondered if she was looking for the same place as me....well.... Then I asked a street cleaner if he knew where the restaurant was and he took great exaggeration in pointing about 10 meters down the street where obviously I am completely blind because there it was, right there. And outside it? The girl I had seen earlier - Sarah.

So after timid introductions (always a little bit of an awkward situation!) and discovering that loads of people had had early starts like me we went into the restaurant and was given a form by the Yummy Jobs people to fill out. It was actually quite complicated, you had to write in your job history (not hard for me, I've only had one job :P) and qualifications and such. But you also had to put in your hobbies, special skills and positions of responsibility held! Suddenly I had a brainwave, it was as if one of those little lightbulbs had pinged on above my head like in the cartoons - I only spent a whole bloody year as a prefect, house captain and Year 7 form prefect didn't I? So that was good, I could fill that in :-)

After most people had finished, we went through to the function room of the restaurant and watched a presentation all about the program, the jobs, the housing etc. A guy called Roger and a lady... called Heather I think... had flown over from the US to give us the presentation and it was really laid back. Roger was hilarious and made it really fun :-) Oh, and I won a prize for knowing that MGM studios is now called the Hollywood Studios...wooo :D It was a Disney ICP mousemat!

Once the presentation was over, we got given our interview times which were already pre-determined. I was hoping mine would be sooner rather than later and I was in luck because it was scheduled for 12 midday.... with guess who? Sarah! Weird coincidence because obviously we didn't pick who we were interviewed with! (We were in pairs) So we went to the South Bank with a few other people (Jaques, Harry and Isabela) to see if we could get something to eat seen as it was about 10.30am now and time for breakfast! The weather was brilliant, cold but sunny and quite windy. The important thing was that it wasn't raining!! So after my yummy granola and yogurt thing, me and Sarah headed back to the restaurant for our interview. It turned out that Jaques also had his interview at 12!

Sarah and I had our interview with the lady from Disney, she was really nice and although we were wearing suits, it was actually quite informal as an interview - more of a chat really!! I was quite nervous but more excited than anything because this was the moment I had built up to for the last 2 months, ready to express how much I wanted to participate on the program. Her first question to me was quite a hard one - "Tell me about yourself". I hate that question so much. So I kinda rambled on about being from Bristol and doing TV Production... then she asked me questions about Bristol ("How would you describe your city and your country?") and about my course ("So what do you wanna do after your course, work behind the camera or...?") She asked Sarah questions as well and to be honest it was over really quickly!! The good news is that my hair looks natural enough even though I have blonde highlights so that's cool and that I might be able to go and investigate how they made and film the live shows in MGM...sorry... the Disney studios (meh... I will probably continue to call them MGM... so much easier to say!) should I be given the opportunity etc etc.

So after that we were free to go! We talked to Hannah from Yummy Jobs for a bit and that was interesting because she just told us about the process and that we would each hear from them in 2-3 weeks. So more waiting! Woo.

We headed off to the big MaccyDs by the London Eye (classy, I know...) and I had this REALLY nice Chicken burger thing. It really didn't taste like McDonalds...it was gooood :D Can't remember what it's called though but it's one of their new ones! Then we all went our seperate ways.... :-)

I am hanging now, so I will finish this post tomorrow!!