Wrappin' it all up with a nice bow

Yesterday, the last day of a four-month trip, I managed to lose my wallet, camera and laptop.

The wallet I left at the check in counter, and was returned to me by a nice man.
The camera I left in my seat on the plane, and was returned to me by a nice lady.
The laptop I just plain lost.  I called and emailed and checked with Lost and Found about seven times.  Then I found it in the back seat of Laurissa's car.  And then I remembered putting it there.


A brief synopsis of my last few days of travel:
Saturday night I accidentally kicked a bathroom stall door with my pinky toe and lost the nail and a heck of a lot of blood.
Summer left for Bangkok on Sunday afternoon. 
I went back to our hostel and went to bed at 9pm but didn't fall asleep until 1am.  There was a loud snoring man not three feet from my face.  It was so loud and he was so close that I actually reached out my arm and touched his head to get him to stop.  Several times.  Sometimes I didn't touch his head, but instead just banged my ring against the metal bed frame near his head.  That was not as effective as the head-touching.  Another man was talking in his sleep.  Two girls came in at midnight and turned the light on and got ready for bed.  A German guy who had the bunk above me saw that I was awake and had a long conversation with me even though everybody else was trying to sleep.  A group of people talked loudly and played guitar outside the window near my bed.  All this time, I should have been irritated, but I couldn't help but smile, as I knew it was to be my last night in a hostel for a very long time.
The next day, I planned to go to the Contemporary Art Museum.  First I packed and showered and Skyped my mom and Cory for some last minute 'on my way home!' conversations.  My dad told me to stay away from 'that Vandersloot'.  I traveled for an hour by subway only to find out that, like every city in the world, Seoul also closes it's museums on Mondays.  Dejected, I returned to a shopping area I remembered, spent too much time and no money and got back to my hostel with barely enough time to make my flight.  I RAN with my 40 pound backpack on my back to the airport shuttle and made it to the airport just in time.  My plane sat for a long time before departing, which narrowed my connection in Chicago to 45 minutes.  So I asked the flight attendant before we made our descent if I could move to the front of the plane to get ahead of everybody in customs.  That's when I left the camera and it was subsequently returned to me.  I was the 15th person off the plane, but with running I made it through the passport control area first.  Then the bags didn't come out for ten minutes and it became 6:50.  No matter what I wasn't going to make my 7:15 flight.  But lots of people missed their connections and I got ahead of them in line.  ha.  They put me on a 9:45 flight, and I checked my bag, but I begged the check in man to let me on the 8:20 flight and that's where I left my wallet. 
I got on the earlier flight, without my bag, and borrowed two cell phones to ask my mom to log into my facebook account and put an SOS out there to let my ride know that I wouldn't be on the original flight.  Once in Minneapolis, I found Laurissa, we went and had drinks to kill time and then returned to the airport to grab my bag and that's when I lost my laptop, or so I thought.  It wasn't until the next morning that I found it in her backseat so I had a fun night trying to remember what I have on the hard drive besides EVERY PICTURE I TOOK FOR THE LAST FOUR MONTHS.  So glad I found it.

Today I caught up some on my favorite shows, up to and including the Lost season finale, for which I have not yet formulated my opinion.  Well at least I can finally read Sarah's blog post about it, and go back and read everybody's facebook status updates that I had previously avoided like the plague.