Flying to the world conservation congress

The IUCN World Conservation congress is finally here, a once every four years 10 day event. This trip has taken a few days of travel, with a flight from the Bahamas to Florida, then onto London and finally a flight to Seoul and onto Jeju. Flying and airport travel in general have changed a lot since I started flying on my round the world travels ten years ago.

Orlando airport is quiet, clean and has free wifi, lovely, but the New York airports can often resemble a scene from a disaster film, noisy, dirty, loud and chaotic. And if you happen to be a bit of a airport spotter ( like a train spotter for airports perhaps), then for the ultimate in clean efficiency, good coffee and excellent chocolate, fly to Zurich on Swiss air. Free swiss chocolate on the flight and a lovely airport that functions like a dream.

Airlines are another thing that has so many changes, with most American airlines now going with the fasting approach to food (none unless you pay extra), and wine with dinner? Forget it! My new airline to try this time is Asiana airlines. This is the way to travel, it is like flying in the good old days of lots of gifts, food, drink, friendly staff and lots of room. The plane was half full (or half empty) so I had 3 whole seats to lay down flat ( a travellers holy grail) with my supplied eye mask, blanket, pillow and slippers, yep slippers! Love it, 10 hours of flying time on this is nothing,

I am here in Jeju yey! It is all very exciting so far, and pretty busy and crazy, there are 7000 people attending. I registered and received my congress badge, which is useful as everyone has them and you can have a sneaky read before or during a conversation. I have seen many people do the sneaky badge look to me, and then I've done it back, then you just end up going over and saying hello! It is good though if I have already met them and I cannot remember their name! I am glad I had some business cards done up and in a fancy holder too so I'm in the "hand out the business card club" now and keep swapping with lots of people. A great way for me to get future contacts for work opportunities for sure! I'm going to keep on chatting and swapping those business cards! And so many people have a phd too so good to talk about this also.

 

We had a very lovely fancy opening ceremony, the president of South Korea gave an amazing speech. He was not only an excellent speaker and did not use notes, but he also quoted Wordsworth. Amazing. He also had a great conservation vision for Korea and this was great to hear about. Then we had performances from Korean dance and music and then it was onto the feast in the botanical gardens. This was great lots of tables with lovely food all over, and of course my bag became a place to collect for breakast/ lunch the next day hehe ( just doing what dad taught me!)

Introductions and networking is fun as everyone seems to be a director of something, or a film person for this, a leader of that, a world traveller for work etc. so I ended up wondering around between groups and just going with hello I'm Kate and from there I had some great chats with some interesting people.

And today was a very full day of events, workshops etc. so networking and learning all day, and a full day of it tomorrow too. I have learned to pick the lunch time sessions that provide lunch and drinks while also listening to a talk or just meet and greats too. Busy! But lots of fun so far! And the biggest tv screens I have ever seen!

 

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