The End of Expo

Sunday, August 12th
I got lunch with people, but I don't remember who. Anyway today was the last day of the Expo and I worked the last shift ever of Expo. After work, I changed clothes because we were having a cocktail party to celebrate and we all went through the USA Pavilion one last time. Beforehand I thought the idea was tacky and unnecessary because I had seen preshow and main show more than enough throughout the summer. However, it was actually really nice to get to go through it with all of the USA Pavilion people. Afterwards, we had a party on the mysterious 4th floor in a really nice place that I hadn't even known existed. There was some food, which I ate until it disappeared because there was both fruit and desserts, my favorite things. Everyone was just talking, dancing, and taking pictures to remember everything. Madison, Rachel, and I decided to leave together sometime around midnight I think and when we got down to the first floor, we realized that there were several other parties happening. There was one throughout an entire block of the pavilion and another one at the Thailand Pavilion. Since I had friends at that pavilion, I decided to go check that one out, but within three minutes of arriving, some guy dumped what was luckily just water over my head and we decided to leave because the party was too crazy. At that point all I wanted to do was jump in a shower, which I did the moment I got home.

Monday, August 13th

We had a luncheon hosted by the mayor of the city of Yeosu in honor of the USA student ambassadors. The food was good, which is always an added bonus when getting a free meal. They gave me a plate of vegetables since I was vegetarian, and some of the vegetables tasted a bit off, but everything else was good. Afterwards, Lauren, George, Josh, Rachel, Yvonne, and I all went to a cafe for some therapeutic chatting about all our thoughts of Expo now that it had come to an end. It was really good and was a good first step in really realizing that Expo was really done because the day off felt more like one of our breaks than the real end. That night I went to Grace's birthday party, which kind of morphed into a party of goodbyes since it was our last night together with everyone. I didn't leave until 1 am because everyone else was scrambling to finish packing.

Tuesday, August 14th

I finished my packing (I had barely anything left) and went to bed at around 2 am and woke back up at 2:45 am to head down to the Expo Town gates to say good byes to everyone leaving. Anyone headed back to the US was taking a chartered bus to Seoul and so about 25 people were leaving then. I was honestly exhausted, so even though I wanted to say goodbyes, I could honest barely even keep awake. I went back to bed at 4 am to get back up at 8 am. A group of us headed down to the KTX station at 8:50 am in taxis, even though it was only a 10 minute walk just because our suitcases were so bulky. We got there before the train arrived, but that meant we were the first people able to put our luggage on the train and then we just hung out until the train finally left at 10 am. I think there was 12 or so of us on the train headed to Seoul. We arrived around 1:30 pm at Seoul Station. I then got to the place I was living at around 2:30 and moved in my bags. Sara and Grace also dumped their stuff temporarily in my room because they lived too far away to take their stuff there and make it back in time to meet Ambassador Kim. So we grabbed lunch and then changed into nice clothes to meet the ambassador. Even only doing those things we were running late, so we ended up taking a taxi to 광화문 (Gwang-hwa-moon). We sat around in the embassy for about a half hour until Ambassador Kim came in and talked with us for about 10 minutes. Afterwards we all went out for dinner and then a large group of us headed to Emart, where I bought a pillow and snacks. That night I got to sleep on towels since I had no sheets or a pillow case yet, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.