Wedding part 2

*Times are not accurate in this post. I don't recall the exact times of my flight and do not feel like converting everything between EST and Korean time.

At the beginning of the summer intensive session which I will cover in more detail later, my sister was married. I knew about the wedding before starting and had cleared the dates before working at wonderland. When the time for my departure drew near, I approached the supervisor and reminded her that I would be taking a friday and monday off for the wedding in July. She became very worried because that was during intensives and suggested I fly out on friday night, appear in New York on Saturday and fly back after the wedding had concluded. She had done all of the math and time conversions correctly, and I would be able to leave directly from work, land in New York, attend the wedding and fly directly back and start working the next monday, but I wasn't up for it. At some point between friday night and monday morning, I would need to sleep and shower, but this wasn't important. She suggested that it wasn't important that I was there for a lot of time since I wasn't the one getting married.

I convinced her that it was important to me, and that I needed time to see my family, so she hesitantly agreed. Nonetheless, the trip felt like the suggested one. On friday morning, my flight left at about 6am. I'm not a person who is good at going to bed early if I have an early appointment, so I figured instead of falling asleep around 2 or 3, waking up at 4 and feeling terrible, I'd just stay up and sleep on the plane. I got to the airport and checked in without any problems.

The plane I rode was a joke. You know those tiny planes you take when you're flying from a big airport to a tiny one about an hour away with no room for either you or your bags? This was one of those planes, except it was a 12 or so hour long flight. I was foolish and didn't make any special requests for my seat and was stuck in the middle between two people who hadn't bathed in several days. I couldn't bring myself to fall asleep, and I finished my book after the first three hours of the flight. I was cut off after two drinks, and they played one movie about a young troubled girl who learns about life and responsibility by training and protecting a wild horse, and the rest of the flight they played golf coverage.

Finally, after the worst flight I have ever been on, I arrived in Los Angelas for a three hour layover. This wasn't too bad. They at least had a smoking area past the security gate. I don't mind not having one past the security gate, but if all of your restaurants, book stores or any other thing to occupy you during a layover are past the security gate, this becomes a huge annoyance. I later arrived at New York at 5:00 am New York time a total of 14 hours after I had first taken off from Incheon. I took a taxi to the hotel where my family was staying and got there around 6:30 or 7:00. Since I had woken up at 7 on thursday in Seoul, and didn't sleep the night before my flight, that makes a total of around 39 hours without sleep. I went out to breakfast with my family, had to go buy some new shoes because the ones I bought in Korea were a bit small to begin with and the feet swelling that occurs after a long flight made my shoes unwearable. I tried to catch a nap, but it just wasn't happening since I was sharing a hotel room with a few other people and everyone was in and out all day. I went to the rehearsal dinner around 7, putting my hours without sleep at around 51, met all of the family I hadn't seen in many years and trying to make small talk while ignoring hallucinations. Finally, at around 10, I babbled something about being delirious and needing sleep and took a taxi back to the hotel where I slept like a baby.

The next day, I was well rested and the wedding was great. I was able to coherently speak to all of my relatives, and the reception was fantastic. On Sunday morning, my mother's cousin gave me a ride to the airport, and I was nearly on my way.

One thing I should mention is that I am an insulin dependent diabetic. I know I post a lot about drinking and smoking, but I know what I'm doing, don't have any problems with complications as of yet and have had great a1cs since I finished puberty.

Anyhoo, I got to the security gate and they pulled out my insulin vials. These are 10ml vials. I didn't have my prescription with me because when you see a doctor, they give you one copy which you give to the pharmacist who keeps it. They quizzed me about being diabetic and living in Korea for about twenty minutes, until finally one of them springs Anyeonghaseyo on me. I respond with "Ne,Anyeonghaseyo. Irim I mueo shimnika?" They finally believe me that I'm not going to blow up the plane with insulin and let me move on.

The flight home was a breeze. I lucked out and had Asiana for my return, reserved a window emergency exit seat and had plenty of sleep and movies to keep me sane.