The traveling to Korea was long and tiring. I managed to sleep the second I sat down on the plane because I ran myself ragged the week before I left, so for the first few hours of the flight I rested.
In general, the funniest part about the whole flying experience was the interaction with all of the flight attendants. I discovered being Asian and traveling to Asia breeds lots of loud and slow talking from all of the flight attendants. For example, when I was asked if I wanted something to drink it was...
WOULD...YOU...LIKE...SOMETHING...TO...DRINK?!?
As if speaking to me louder would set off my internal translator or something. We've all done it before, why do we speak louder to people when they don't understand us? Volume has nothing to do with knowing a language, and it doesn't really make anything better it just deafens the receiver.
We arrived at the Sofitel Ambassador after a crazy cab ride where our luggage was literally strapped into the trunk of the cab. All I could say to myself when I saw the cab driver using his little bungee cords to keep it all in there was, "At least I didn't buy any gifts yet."
The hotel was beautiful, very upscale and extremely clean. We all got a special rate on the rooms for being part of the conference and the rate was a steal given the quality of the hotel. It was great to finally get into the room and put down all of the luggage.
I'm not sure how much everyone else has traveled, but there were some interesting things about the hotel. One, you put your keycard in a slot inside the room and the key activates all of the lights and power for the entire room. Its a great way for the hotel to save energy, but as a guest its a rude awakening when you're trying to charge your cell phone, or camera, or other electronic devices while sleeping or out, not realizing if the key is not in the slot the items you are trying to charge are just sitting there doing nothing.
The other great thing about this particular hotel is that it had "magic curtains". There were two layers of curtains and the one layer made the room so completely dark, that you could be sleeping during the middle of the day and you would think it was 2am in the morning . The first morning we woke up, we had no idea what time it was, and when we pulled back the curtains I think two pairs of retinas got completely burned.
I took an Ambien as soon as we got our PJs on thinking I could kick Jet Lag's ass with a pill.
I was wrong.
We woke up about 4 1/2 hours later very tired and very out of it. Not knowing what else to do, we layed there until about 7:30am then finally gave up and got ready. I was going to meet my birth family and needed to call my friend Michael to set up a time and a place we could meet in order to get over to Eastern Social Welfare Society for the big meeting.
Since I'm exhausted I will write more about the meeting tomorrow when I will hopefully be more rested and not feeling completely dumb.
More to come.
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