Funny!

Today's plan was this: 10:30-1:30 we will book summer vacation flights, have lunch, hop a bus to Seoul, watch an LG Twins baseball game, and call the day a success! Here's what really happened. We (the Trio- Shauna, Britney, and I) started the morning on time with our trip planning sitting outside at a local coffee shop with wireless internet. With our three computers, we searched out flights and after much discussion made our decision as to where we were going for our summer vacation. Thinking we were a head of schedule, we grabbed lunch and ate no other than Bibimbop at our favorite restaurant. We had to have our favorite meal on Teacher's Day! We got home and here's where the problems began. Each of us has transferred money to be able to book our flights using our own cards from home, as our Korean debit cards are virtually useless...even in Korea. I stepped up to make the first of our slightly hefty priced ticket bookings. When I checked my account to be sure of the money my mother had told me was there...it was not. At 11:45pm (home time) I called to ask my mother where it had gone. She had ALREADY (in the few hours after the wire had gone through) transferred all of my earnings to a savings account! Therefore, I did not have the funds to book my flight. However, I convinced mom to let me book my second flight on their credit card and have her transfer the money from my account to hers on Monday. Problem solved!

I booked my flight and Shauna was up. Card declined! Before calling her parents, we called the customer service line twice to which the man politely tried to answer our questions with no success. The next phone call home to Shauna's parents was made around 12:30am. As much as she didn't want to, Shauna also made the choice to book her flight on her parents credit card. In the race of things as we were trying to get to the baseball game, she typed her father's name in as the passenger (as well as in the credit card information) because her first attempt on his card was rejected due to her name being processed as a duplicate. Not thinking, she hit submit booked a flight for her dad! At this point, we were in a state of crisis knowing that she had "agreed to the terms" that no changes could be made to the flight and it was non-refundable. We immediately dialed up the customer service man who answered me by saying, "Yes mam, I am the same person you have called four times now!" He was getting feisty, but c'mon...learn to count, it was only our third call! We waited on hold for 20 minutes to be transferred to a different customer service woman who politely helped cancel the flight Shauna had just booked (with a small fee) and were transferred back to our man friend! The call was dropped, but when we finally got a hold of him the last time to change the credit card information on Shauna's original flight, we had apparently pushed him over the edge with the job he is paid to do...HELP PEOPLE who have had credit card decline problems! Reluctantly he helped as we straightened out Shauna's issues and got her flight booked. As I was thanking him for ALL of his help today, he again responded, "Yes mam, I am the same person you called 10 times today!" We may have called a few more times than I mentioned in the story (more like 6-7), but it certainly wasn't 10! At this point, we couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably.

Hours later after Britney had made multiple trips home, read some magazines on my bed, and started helping me with my Toblerone chocolate...it was her turn to book. What else could possibly go wrong? Don't worry...card declined! Without hesitation, Britney called her parents who so kindly answered and passed along their credit card information. Ok, so this might have been our 10th call to our "same" customer service friend. He obviously figured out we were the same group as she was changing details for the exactly flight with the same problem we had just figured out with Shauna's card. Thank goodness Shauna and I had mastered his outsourced accent because he literally changed her information, repeated it back, and hung up with, "You're good. You're flight has been confirmed. Good bye!" before Britney even had a chance to respond. We 'translated' for Britney as we understood what he had said, and we were all officially booked!

Did I mention we missed the base ball game? We had called to let them know we would be late in the first place and later found out that we had been kicked out of the group as there weren't enough tickets for our entire group anyway, so we were the first to be eliminated. Good thing we weren't already on our way. Anyway, we went from excited about knowing where we were going to nauseous when we had cards declined and double booked flights to rolling on the floor laughing by 6:00pm. I thought for a while I would be traveling alone. Thank goodness that's not the case. We're ready for our summer vacation come July 24th! Oh...I suppose you want to know where we're going, huh? Eight hours later, a missed baseball game, and 10 customer service calls to the same guy...and we're headed to VIETNAM!

*Special thanks to all of our parents who were woken in the middle of the night, willingly gave us their credit card information over the phone, and helped make our vacation possible. WE PROMISE we'll grow up someday and be able to pay for ourselves. :)