Well the great news is I found my memory card adaptor. Is that a collective sigh of relief I hear?! I never did make it to bed on Saturday night, in fact I was barely packed when Roma and Wayne came to pick me up.
Flight Stories
-We were loaded up with luggage and boxes. I had my super sized suitcase (which for just over two weeks in Seoul weighed 29kgs – bodes well for going home don’t you think?!), a wheelie suitcase with my laptop and printer, a box with 3000 name tags which was similar in size and weight to a box with reams of paper in it and a file box with all my files and what not. Roma had a big green plastic box akin to a toy box. We had resigned ourselves to paying excess luggage but the super lady, Angelica, at check-in told us if we bought a cardboard box from American Airlines for $10 we could put all those boxes in it and perhaps avoid paying excess luggage as it would cut our luggage down to the six allowed pieces, but the weight would be a different issue. So obviously a box at $10 was a much better deal that two extra pieces at $148 each. When we packed the new box and weighed it, we were 400g away from being too much. That’s not even a bag of sugar!
I used to pride myself on travelling lightly. Not anymore.
The hero of the hour, Angelica. She was much prettier than this picture makes her appear.
The $10 box (worth $300).
By the skin of our teeth.
Monks travel too you know. But only in ugly colours.
-Due to all the luggage issues I missed my opportunity to ask for an aisle seat, but Angelica had my back and gave me an emergency row seat which in my opinion is only one step away from travelling business. It was my first time in an emergency row and was expecting some sort of tutorial on what I had to do in said emergency and maybe a team talk from my row mates about who would do what should the worst happen. Nothing. They must have looked at our row and decided we looked like the sort of people who could handle it.
-I like talking on planes and I was delighted that the guys on either side of me were up for a bit of chat. The guy on the left works for Hyundai and was going on a tour of plants with car dealers from America. The guy on the right is in the Army and about to start a tour in Korea. I talked with Hyundai about the World Cup, living in the South and his children and I got to ask Army all my questions about the army. He loved sitting beside me! I think had it not been a full flight and he had all that extra leg room he’d have asked to be moved. (Just in case you wondered, he has never said to anyone ‘I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you’.)
-Actually there were lots of military on the plane (More information from Army : they don’t have to wear their military fatigues when travelling. But interestingly, you have to wear your dog tags when flying, when you are in combat and when your commanding officer tells you to, you don’t have to always have them on. I had a lot of questions). When I was on a walkabout, I stopped at the back of the plane and one guy asked me was I in the military too. I stifled my laughter and thanked him for thinking that I could be. My guess that he hadn’t been in the Army for long was confirmed, he’d just finished his six months of basic training and this was his first tour. He clearly has a lot to learn if he thinks I could possibly be in the army.
-Talking to these two guys, you’ve really got to admire people in the services. Whether you think war is right or wrong, you have to give credit to people who sign up. Army has been in it for eighteen years and will be in Korea for the next year at least. He has a two year old son. That’s rough however you look at it.
-During take off the air stewardesses were sitting opposite us. One reached across and handed us each ear plugs saying ‘you are sitting by the toilet [I think implying that people will gather in the area]. Without missing a beat, Hyundai looked across to the toilets and said ‘it doesn’t get that loud does it?!’ I laughed out loud, actually it was probably more a guffaw. Well if something’s funny, then life is too short not to laugh at it.
-Another time I was walking down the plane and this one woman was looking at me like she knew me. But I was looking at her like I knew her. Turns out she was on the plane from Seoul in March and had talked to Virginia for most of the flight. I wish I had bought that lottery ticket now. Anyway as I stopped to talk to her she said ‘you’re the girl from Ireland who had the rat in your kitchen!’ I didn’t correct her, I like that she exaggerated my story.
We arrived in Seoul on Monday night and I officially became the last person in the world to know who won the World Cup. I came third in the predictions thing though so hurrah. Matt had guessed Italy would win and Jason beat me on points in the opening stages. I was the top girl but against Americans it's hardly anything to write home about really. (But just realised I am anyway.)
So it’s now Tuesday and we are in the calm before the storm. I am working in my hotel room on registration things and thought I'd put this on. Today has largely been a big old waste of a day, mostly to do with tinternet access in our rooms being broken. Roma and I had all sorts of people looking into it for about an hour. They played around with settings on my computer which makes me slightly nervous and just as I was trying to think of the punch line to the joke ‘how many Koreans does it take to fix the internet’ the actual answer came ‘move rooms’. So I’m in a new room. The upside is it’s bigger, the down side is my bed is further away from the TV. Sometimes you can’t have it all.
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