With Thanksgiving just weeks away, this time of year always makes me nostalgic. Sometimes I think about food and fellowship with family. I wonder what my friends are up to, now that we're scattered to the winds. This year, especially, I've been thinking back to my Disney College Program (it's a wonder how 10 years can fly by so fast) and my first Thanksgiving away from home.

As anyone who has visited Walt Disney World during the holiday season can attest, it's an amazing experience, and as anyone who has worked at WDW during that same time can tell you, it takes a lot of hard work to make the magic happen. Hours seem to get longer, work seems to get more rigorous and morale begins to drop as the CPs around you realize that they're not going to be seeing their families until some time in January.

That fact hit some a lot harder than others. At first, I couldn't understand why everyone was suddenly realizing that doing a Fall CP meant not going home for the holidays - or, even worse, that they were going to have to work during the holidays. That's what we signed up for! Little did I know that just before Thanksgiving, I would have my first and worst bout of homesickness - and over a salad dressing commercial, no less.

Finally, I could empathize with my friends and roommates, but that wasn't really a good thing. I started having a really rough time. I missed everyone back home, I failed an audition and I even got into a fight with one of my roommates on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

It takes a lot to get me upset, but I was admittedly furious, and it took me all day to box my feelings back up. Returning to my Vista Way apartment after finishing my shift at 1am, I was intent on figuring out some sort of reconciliation, eager to put this dark time behind me. With Thanksgiving only five days away, it was time to celebrate togetherness and give thanks.

But that's not what happened.

While I was working through my feelings and plugging up my tears, a water pipe burst on the third floor of my apartment building. The situation went unchecked for hours - long enough to flood the place with 30,000 gallons of water (that's what the exhausted crew with the pump truck told me, anyway). My first floor apartment was destroyed, and I grabbed the few dry possessions I still owned, dazed.

With nowhere to go at 3am, I spent the rest of the night in the backseat my Jeep, wet, freezing and miserable. A few hours later, after a tense meeting with Vista Way's management company, it was decided that my 5 roommates and I would be split up and sent to live in different apartments, as there was nowhere else to place us.

So, four days before Thanksgiving, my former roommates and I collected our things and parted ways. Some of them, I never saw again. Others I might have never had the opportunity to reconnect with if it weren't for social media.

Imagine the awkwardness of moving into a new place with five people you've never met, but who have had three months to bond with each other. Can you even fathom welcoming a stranger into your home who reeks of greywater (or worse), bringing with her a cheap toaster and half a dozen trash bags, stuffed with her effects. These girls had no more warning that I would arrive than I had warning that my apartment was being annexed into Atlantica.

But these amazing young women didn't seem to mind - in fact, they welcomed me. They made me feel at home and at ease. We shared a Thanksgiving meal together that week, and despite the horrible chain of events that led me to that moment, I realized how very much I had to be thankful for.

As for my apology, I honestly can't remember if I was able to make things right with the roommate I fought with until my Spring 2007 CP (yes - even after all of this and more, I chose to stay and extend) when I saw her floating down the lazy river at Blizzard Beach. We only had about 30 seconds to catch up (I couldn't exactly leave my post), but judging by our mutual excitement to see each other, I'd say that our kerfuffle was definitely water under the bridge.

So, as we approach the holiday season, give thanks. Despite your circumstances, count your blessings. May your memories be merry and bright.