What now?

February 18th, 2010

I don’t know what to do with this blog now. It was supposed to be a travel blog, with a focus on Korea and Asia (at least for the next year), but now I’m not sure what to write about. Obviously, if I go to Japan, I’ll write about that here, but blogging into the void about somewhere I’ve never been isn’t appealing to me right now. I’ve done the navel-gazing sort of blogging, where I tell you random stories from my day-to-day life, and I don’t want to do that here.

So, I suppose this blog is going on hiatus until I figure out what to do with it. Ciao, kidlings. It’s been…something.

Aborted

February 13th, 2010

I’ve been planning for this trip since the end of August. That was a little under six months ago. For six months I’ve been mulling over this trip, saying my goodbyes, altering my life. I quit a decent job with great people, I packed up my life in New York City, I spent a lot of money and energy.

And now, I’m not going to Seoul to teach.

I feel some relief at not having to start over in a strange place yet again. But I really did want to teach. I watched a video on the company’s website of what looked like 3rd or 4th graders performing at the winter camp, and they were ADORABLE. So cute, so eager to please, so willing to try. I miss teaching kids. And now I have to look for a job. And then there’s all this debt…

I did pray about this, that if I wasn’t supposed to go, that it wouldn’t happen. And I don’t retract those prayers. But there is some disappointment.

And what do I do now? I just…I had some idea of what to expect for the next year of my life, and now all of that’s been tossed to the winds and scattered.

Wow. This really sucks.

Update: I wrote and published this post last night. I slept on the situation. And I feel pretty good. Don’t worry about me, kidlings. I’ll be all right. The sun is shining, I have options, and I’m loved. Life is good.

In a funk

February 10th, 2010

Final Update: I won’t be going to Seoul.

Update #1: After speaking to the Chicago Consulate again this morning, even if I overnighted my passport and documents to them today, the soonest I would get them back is Thursday, the day after my scheduled flight.

So my company’s options are:

1) Have me send my passport to Chicago and wait for it to come back, then book me another ticket to Seoul (which would be ridiculously expensive).

2) Have me get on the flight to Seoul, hope immigration is kind because I have a one-way ticket and would be entering on a tourist visa, get settled, then go to the Korean Consulate in Japan for my visa stamp.

Those are the options, and it is now out of my hands. I’ll keep you posted!

Update #2:

*facepalm*

They’d “rather not pay for the flight & hotel in Japan” since the other teachers are getting their stamps. “Is there another Korean Consulate” I can go to? There are several, but those require plane tickets, which at this point, would cost me the extra arm and leg I do not possess.

So, the company doesn’t have any money, and I don’t have any money. We seem to be at an empasse.

This calls for a moment of reflection.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I being stubborn just to be stubborn? I’m just not sure all of this is worth it anymore. I may get verbally and physically abused in the street (not to mention getting arrested for calling the police to get rid of the person harassing you), Koreans will look at me and automatically think I’m not as smart as a white teacher would be, and I’d be cutting myself off from my main support system. It’s less than a week before I’m supposed to leave, and there’s a major roadblock to my getting to Korea and working to earn the money that drew me there in the first place.

On the other hand, I would have the opportunity to see a side of the world I’ve never seen, make some new friends, and pay down debt.

I just don’t know…

Their other suggestion was to go to another consulate. Well, tomorrow’s Friday. If I bought a same-day ticket, it would cost a fortune. Monday’s a holiday. That leaves Tuesday. If I were to go to NYC on Tuesday (which would still cost a fortune), where the turnaround time for a visa stamp is 12 hours, I would be racing time to get my visa on Wednesday, make it back to MN for my flight to Chicago that afternoon.

It just doesn’t work. I still have to pack, and take care of various administrative tasks here, at home. I can’t be running all over the country at this point just to get a visa stamp.

UGH.

Update #3:

A visa run to Japan seems to be off the table as an option.

I really don’t know what to do.

Update #4:

I’m calling the company office this evening and we’ll hash it out. As I see it, either they want me there or they don’t. I’ll lay out the financial cost of option one (rebook the flight) and option two (visa run to Fukuoka), and ask if they’ll reimburse me if I pay for it.

We’ll see what happens.

(I feel like I should change the name of this post to “Visa-gate 2010.”)

Update #5:

Well, I’ve delivered my ultimatum. We’ll see what happens.

*********

Original Post

I’m annoyed right now.

And my annoyance is very much related to this whole “Going to Korea” business.

At the moment, I don’t want to go. (To be frank, I haven’t wanted to go for months now, but that’s neither here nor there, now that my departure is imminent.)

I was waiting on my visa acceptance number so that I could go down to the Korean Consulate in Chicago to get my actual visa stamp in my passport. I received the email with the visa number early this morning. I called the consulate before I left for my dentist appointment. “2-3 days to process,” they said. I said, “Ok,” and hung up, not really thinking about that 2-3 days but feeling a nagging sense of “something’s wrong with that picture.”

After letting it tumble around on low in my brain, I realized that 2-3 days to process meant the wreck of my plans to drive down to Chicago on Friday, waltz into the consulate, get my stamp, then turn around and go home. (That’s how I thought it worked.) How did it wreck everything? Let’s walk through it and see.

1) Today is Wednesday – for three more hours. I leave next Wednesday afternoon, the 17th. If I were to drive to Chicago, per my original plan, I couldn’t leave here until early Friday morning, due to an appointment at the dentist tomorrow morning that I cannot miss.

2) I realize now that driving down would be folly, as it would cost me $110 in gas to get there and back, and I wouldn’t even be coming back with my passport in hand. So…

3) …mail/FedEx is the only option.

4) IF my passport arrived in Chicago (via me, or the mail) on Friday, IF they actually started to work on it on Friday (which they might not), making that day one, they wouldn’t touch it again until Tuesday. And IF they finished it on Tuesday (which, once again, they might not), they might just mail it back to me that same day, and it might reach the house before I left for the airport on Wednesday. Lots of “mights.”

Because, you see, without my passport, I’m going nowhere. But I have no choice but to send it down there and hope it makes it back to me on Wednesday. And if it doesn’t, well…

I’m feeling kind of petty, but I’m done bending over backwards and driving myself further into debt just to make all of this happen. If Korean immigration was slow in processing the paperwork, not my problem. If other people dragged their feet, not my problem. If I don’t get to Seoul next Wednesday, not my problem.

Oh, the places I’ve been.

January 28th, 2010

Last week, I decided to start writing down all the places I remember visiting in my lifetime. I was going to make a nifty little map with flags and blah blah blee blah, but I’m too lazy busy for that.

And double strike all that. Google Maps makes it EASY. (Click that link right thur to see the map.)

So here they are:

The Places I’ve Been, In No Particular Order

  • Salem, OR born here!
  • Bloomington-Normal, IL
  • Oakdale, MN
  • Woodbury, MN
  • Minneapolis, MN
  • Ely, MN
  • Duluth, MN
  • Madison, WI
  • Chicago, IL
  • Providence, RI
  • Matunuck, RI
  • Mystic, CT
  • Boston, MA
  • Portsmouth, NH & Kittery, ME
  • Durham, NC
  • Chapel Hill, NC
  • Raleigh, NC
  • Charleston, SC
  • Charlotte, NC
  • Winston-Salem, NC
  • Birmingham, AL
  • Lookout Mountain, GA
  • Chattanooga, TN
  • Knoxville, TN
  • Columbia, SC
  • Washington, DC
  • Suffolk, VA
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Myrtle Beach, SC
  • Virginia Beach, VA
  • Green Bay, WI
  • Detroit, MI
  • Oshkosh, WI
  • Atlanta, GA
  • Miami, FL
  • Orlando, FL
  • St. Petersburg, FL
  • San Juan, PR
  • St. Thomas, VI
  • St. John, VI
  • St. Maarten, VI
  • Barbados
  • St. Lucia, VI
  • Ocho Rios, Jamaica
  • Labadee, Haiti
  • Grand Cayman
  • Burlington, VT
  • Sonoma, CA
  • Denver, CO
  • Rapid City, SD
  • Fargo, ND
  • Cozumel, Mexico
  • London, England
  • Mont St. Michel, Normandy, France
  • Paris, France
  • Glasgow, Scotland
  • Barcelona, Spain
  • Madrid, Spain
  • Rome, Italy
  • Naples, Italy
  • Herculaneum, Italy
  • Athens, Greece
  • Mykonos, Greece
  • Rhodes, Greece
  • Limassol, Cyprus
  • Alexandria, Egypt
  • Cairo, Egypt
  • Giza, Egypt
  • Kusadasi, Turkey
  • Ephesus, Turkey
  • Segovia, Spain
  • Toledo, Spain
  • New York, NY
  • Brooklyn, NY
  • Syracuse, NY
  • Honolulu, Oahu, HI
  • Maui, HI
  • Kauai, HI
  • The Big Island, HI
  • Ames, IA
  • Luverne, MN
  • Worthington, MN the World’s Largest Ball of Twine is around here somewhere
  • Rochester, MN Yes, I have been to the Mayo Clinic
  • Yellowstone National Park
  • Shreveport, LA

Say that ten times fast.

January 25th, 2010

The KoreanClass101.com videos have been a great intro to learning to read hangul and being able to recognize the sounds of words. Even just yesterday, I couldn’t distinguish the subtleties between sounds. I’m not even close to fluent (yet), but it’s getting easier to understand pronunciations.

Thanks, KoreanClass101.com!

Fears

January 18th, 2010

Worried

I’m afraid I’m going to get hopelessly lost in Seoul, and no one will be able to help me because I don’t speak Korean and they don’t speak English.

I’m afraid that the food will give me diarrhea.

I’m afraid I’m going to be miserable.

I’m afraid I’m going to be miserable, and that I’ll still have to drag myself to work because my students and their schools and my employers will be depending on me, and I’ll do a terrible job because I’ll be miserable.

I’m afraid that, if I hate it, the days will drag on and a year will go all too slowly.

I’m afraid that I’ll get yelled at for not speaking any Korean.

I’m afraid of feeling “foreign.”

I’m afraid that my apartment won’t be soundproof and that my neighbors will be very noisy.

I’m afraid of mouth noises and not being able to eat out or ride the bus or subway in peace.

I’m afraid my iPod (my mouth noise blocker) will break and I won’t be able to get a new one.

I’m afraid of the pipes in my building freezing, and not having water for DAYS because my landlady doesn’t care. (This is happening to my friend Paula right now. Grrr.)

I’m afraid I won’t be able to find adequate hair care.

I’m afraid I’ll suck at learning Korean.

I’m afraid of my students mocking me for being black/tall/not speaking Korean/having hair on my arms/being a bad teacher/smelling funny.

I’m afraid of being a bad teacher.

Mission Vaccination: Accomplished

January 15th, 2010



Ow

Originally uploaded by AdiaMichelle

And my arm still hurts.

Hepatitis A and B on Monday.

Tetanus on Wednesday.

No, they weren’t all in the same arm, but whichever Hepatitis shot went in my right arm hurt, and the tetanus in my left arm still hurts. I’ll start to perform some simple routine action like, oh, raising my arm to reach for something, and then my face squinches up and I gasp, “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. OW.” It sucks.

Typhoid vaccination is recommended for travel to South Korea, so if I get that one, I’ll have to find a different clinic than where I received my other vaccinations. Hmm…I’ll have to get on that soon.

Have a good weekend, kidlings!