So, I didn’t sleep very well the first night in Vegas, but that’s alright, I had the adrenaline of the time-change messing up my internal clock and not knowing what to expect with this email conference. I have never been to a work conference before, I had heard plenty about them from my mommy, but that’s nothing like experiencing on for yourself.
Before I get into what this day was like, I’d like to say that I don’t think Satan wanted me to attend this meeting. Which is strange because you would think he would want me to go to Las Vegas, and endure all the darkness that he has fabricated here. But alas, the weekend before I was leaving, I got a very bad cold and wasn’t sleeping well at all, and my car’s brake fluid decided to start leaking. Was a rather interesting start to the week. But Praise God I have friends and family who pray because I got the best two nights of sleep in a long time, the two nights before I left, and my car was being taken care of by some of my GFA family. So Praise God for that provision. He really does know what He’s doing. I also can’t help but think, maybe He made me sick for this week because he knew there would be people here that might possibly take advantage of a young single girl who has no clue what she’s doing. So, it was kinda a blessing in disguise, one might say.
So, Tom and I met out in the hallway to head over from the Harrah’s to Caesar’s Palace, I recorded this walk for you all to see, but I’m not home yet, so you’ll have to wait till I’m back to see it. Just ask me. It’s not all that fancy, but it includes having to walk through the smoke and alcohol filled casino of the Harrah’s, walk down the street past bars, tattoo parlors, clubs, etc, Cross the street called Strip st. up till we encountered Caesar’s Palace. This first day we took the walkway into the casino area. It was a series of squishy moving walkways that took us into the heart of Caesar’s Palace. We wandered the casino floor till we found someone that could direct us to the Conference Center, and then made our way through the winding corridors that make up the palace. This place is HUGE! After following the signs for the Email Marketing Summit through the maze of hallways and escalators and such, we found the email summit.
Once we were all signed in, we found some seats at a table and waited for the sessions to start. This first day was rather boring as I had no clue what they were talking about at first and it took a while to catch onto the lingo that I was unfamiliar with. Slowly but surely it started to make sense and the speakers were getting slowly more animated as they got more into what they were talking about. 8 hours go by and they present us with a test. Yes, you read that right. They gave us a test.
Now, when I finished my final exam in Highschool, I thought I would be finished forever with the loathsome Scantron Tests. You know, the ones where you fill in the bubbles according to the question’s answer? Apparently I was wrong, because two and a half years after I graduated from Owen J Robert’s Highschool, I took yet again, a scantron test to see how well I listened to the lectures, with the notorious number 2 pencil. Praise God it was an open book test because I barely remembered what we rushed through in the sessions. Thankfully we only have to pass with an 80% to be considered a “Certified Professional in Email Marketing”. I personally think they should have waited till the end of the third day, or fourth day, but that’s okay. We’ll see if I’m a professional when the results come back.
After our test, Tom and I headed back to our hotel for some grub and rest. The journey back from the hotel was more interesting than the journey from the hotel in the morning. You see… Las Vegas comes to life at night. So the night life was just starting to get under-way when we were headed back. There were stalls and vendors open, people were setting up for that night’s show, there were people out and about on the streets, there were people handing stuff out on the streets to go see the “show girls”, etc. Let’s just say, Tom and I started walking a little quicker to get back to our hotel rooms.
When we got in the elevator that would take us to the third floor of our hotel, we realized just how tired we were. Both of us, with bags under our eyes, agreed to meet an hour and a half later to go find dinner. Giving us some down time to rest. I ended up watching Fox and the Hound II on my laptop. We wandered around the Harrah’s trying to find a decent place to eat, and we settled on this steak-house type restaurant. There was even an elevator to get up to this fancy restaurant. But once we arrived, we discovered that the prices were EXPENSIVE! so we went back to KGB.
This time at KGB we had a guy waiter. He was very obviously gay and was very flirtatious. But he mainly paid attention to me. Smiling, giggling, talking, etc. It was rather interesting. For me, I’m used to hanging with people like this, coming from a public school background, and from the various mission trips I had been on. I felt bad for the guy, and will continue to pray for him. Seeing how “open” he was to communicating to me, I was reminded of how we are supposed to be approachable. Like Jesus was. Not agreeing with the sin, and not encouraging it. But not condemning to the point of people not wanting to be around believers. Praise God for Him loving this waiter through me. I just hope that he will see that and not be turned off to any believers he may come across in the future.
After dinner we went back to our hotel rooms, and as my form of resting, I watched another movie (Oliver and Company), read my bible outloud (as a sort of prayer for this city), prayed, and then went to bed.
And so ends day 2 of my trip to Las Vegas. Stay tuned for Day 3!
