Nov. 26th (The second day)

I got up at 6:30 am. I remembered that I fell asleep hearing the sound Eunmi was making by discharging(?) milk out of her breasts using a little machine. I know women breast-feeding their children should do that. Sometimes it is tough just to take care of myself but women who have children should do such things as well. Yes, mothers are all great. And I don't think I could be like them. After we got ready, we went to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast. The hotel room rates were $136 for a night with breakfast excluded. The waitress asked us "A la carte or buffet?" when we entered in. Eunmi didn't know what a la carte meant. The experience at Ginga is sometimes helpful because I learned those words working at Ginga.:) We were kind of in a rush so we had a la carte. The service at the restaurant was baaaaad. It took us 10 mintues to order and 10 minutes to ask for a check. People who are the working class in the states seemed mostly black people and they didn't have smiles on their faces.
We were a bit late and John and Kurt left for McCormick place by a shuttle bus before us. When I and Eunmi got there, I said hi to John. He gave me a very cold and merciless look without saying anything back to me. Fortunately, I don't get hurt too much any more by his such behaviors because I was trained and got stronger now.:) Eunmi explained to John it was her that got up late. John couldn't get angry with her because she was the CEO. hoho
We started arranging displays and had to finish everything quickly as 10 am was the opening time of the exhibition and it was the first day. Since there were too many huge and eye-catching booths of well-known multinational companies like GE and Siemens, our booth didn't stand out at all and rather looked dull although we spent about $30,000 dollars on it. It seemed Siemens' booths took up almost 10% of the whole hall space and they looked busy all the time just with the people from Siemens. Companies well known as camera manufacturers like Kodak, Konica, Olympus were in the medical industry, which I didn't know before. The atmosphere of the exhibition made me feel alive and gave me a sense of motivation. It was telling me about the professionalism. It felt like working in front of a computer for a year couldn't be better than being at this exhibition for a week.
More and more people visited our booth and I was afraid if I could deal with them without knowing much about what we make and without being fluent in speaking English. But when I had no problem understanding people's English, I got confident and my Enlgish came out very naturally. Even though I didn't know what to say at first, I found myself adapting to this situation gradually. I wondered if my effort of watching Enlgish TV all the time has improved my listening and speaking skills or if it was Amercian English easy for me to listen to.
I saw John and Kurt's business cards were on the display and asked John if I should put my cards on it as well. Then John moved Kurt's to the corner and put mine near his where people can see them better. After some time, Kurt said "People take cards at the corner more. Let me move yours there." and swaped his for mine. Does he think I am an idiot or something? Or he couldn't think of better excuses. Kurt has been always sly and condescending. That's why I made him a nick name "Director Cho" in the beginning when we used to get along. He talks like he is the boss. I know what I should do but he likes to intervene and tell me what to do. I can feel he watches me all the time as if he monitors me and he is always interested in what I am doing. I made a scrapbook that I collected some things to study on and he was looking it all through when I was doing something else. When I was standing next to Frank to take notes of what is discussed during a meeting, he told me to take notes well. Oh my god, why does he say such things to me when Frank already told me so and I was doing it. And he is not my senior or anything. That kind of behavior would piss anybody off, I am sure. I could never understand why he likes to be so condescending and nosy all the time. Since we just started talking after a long time of the cold war, I tried to be nice and didn't say anything but "I am doing it because FRANK told me to do so.".
At lunch, I had a hot dog with a burnt sausage and caremelized onions. How could food people eat be this junky?
After the first day at the exhibition ended, I was very tired as my tension released. We had dinner at the same Thai restaurant as last night and I complained that we should go to a different place to eat because we flew here. I could see John was thinking I was showing too much of my personal preference or something. But Frank smiled and said we should find another restaurant for Jenny tomorrow. It was interesting the same words I said were taken in completely different ways by two people.