Day 8

I am soooooo tired.

First off, I know I was going to try to post every day while I was line Los Angeles, but we were on the go all day everyday we were there and was tired by the end of each day. I did, however, take notes... here we go.

This has been one of my longest days ever. I got to bed around 2 am, got to sleep sometime past 3 am, and was awoken at 4:30 to get ready to head to the airport. I didn't even get to REM sleep... this is going to be a rough one.

And rough it was. I did manage some catnaps on the plane, but nothing approaching restful sleep. The flight was uneventful and smooth as glass going in. At least we were able to get an exit room seat where we could stretch our legs. Got our luggage and went to the car rental counter. The car smells like cigarette smoke and there are scratches all over the passenger side. I got someone to fill out the damage inspection and made sure every little ding was pointed out. I''m too tired at this point to try to get another car. Besides, 24 hours with the windows down or AC blowing should clear up some of the stale cigarette smoke.

The first purpose was to do a location check on the Philippine Embassy so I could get an idea of what time we needed to leave the hotel in the morning. When we left the airport, however, it was not even yet noon. My wife suggested going into the embassy and seeing if we could take care of business that day.

We got to the embassy, which is located on the 5th floor of an office building in the middle of Korea-town, at around 12:30 pm. There weren't too many people in there waiting, but the employees were on lunch break until 1 pm. We took our number and waited. As it got closer to 1 pm, however, the room started to quickly fill up as those who had been waiting since morning also came back from eating lunch. By the way, our lunch consisted of a soft drink and a shared bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. By 1 pm the room was very crowded and the first number called was 169... we had number 283.

We waited until just before 5 pm before my wife was called. We took care of things and headed back to the hotel. We ate dinner ($43 for a burger, a chicken club sandwich, an appetizer, and 2 drinks) and went up to the room. Off to dreamland with thoughts of what to do in Los Angeles on Day 9, now that we don't need to go the embassy.