Freaking Out...

...does not even begin to describe it. My life for the next year has, as best as possible, been packed into these three bags:

(and no, the spinning wheel is not coming with me to Korea)

Earlier this week we went over to L. L. Bean in Columbia and I purchased two of their extra large adventure duffels with wheels, and one medium tote to use as a carry-on. I had already packed two rolling duffels, but upon inspection it was clear that there was absolutely no way that I could cram everything I needed into those bags. The bigger of the two previous bags was about 3-4 inches shorter than these bags. The bag on the right weighs in at a reasonable 49.54 lbs. The max weight without surcharges is 50 lbs. Nothing like cutting it close...

The bag on the left contains EVERYTHING ELSE, and weighs a whopping 76 lbs. For the privilege of having everything I need, I will pay United Airlines a $200 fee. Lovely. Then, of course, I have my carry-on chock full of goodies, and my purse packed to the gills. When I left on Semester at Sea, I struggled to figure out how you packed 100 days, and all climates, into two 70 lb bags. I was right on the cusp of having too much in my bags on that trip. You should all be impressed that even though it took me 140 lbs to pack for 100 days in 2005, it only took me 126 lbs (give or take a few) to pack for an ENTIRE YEAR this time.

There are lots of things you have to pack that you never really think about when moving in the states. For instance, my parents insisted that I bring a smoke/fire detector for my apartment, since it might not have one. I had to bring half a year's supply of my favorite deodorant, because the brands and availability are limited (and I couldn't afford more right now, hahaha! that stuff is expensive!). I had to pack gifts for my school principal, and umbrellas and flashlights. I packed a pillow and slippers to wear in my house because it is custom to remove your shoes. There is just a bunch of stuff that you have to think of, and find room for, in addition to clothes for a year. Since (from what I have heard) most Korean women are a size 2 and wear size 7 or smaller shoes, I really needed to come prepared. We all know that I am no size 2. I had to pack clothes for heat and humidity when I get there (and next summer), and bitterly cold winters. Oh, and all that good stuff in between. STRESSFUL!

This morning, in honor of my leaving, my mom treated me to a facial and pedicure at Glow in Annapolis. The pedicure was great and the facial was amazing. It was definitely a needed hour to relax. She had given me the choice of a facial or massage, and I am glad that I chose facial as my muscles would have been all knotted back up from stress by now anyway. I haven't felt much like eating the past few days- I pretty much constantly feel nauseated by all the butterflies in my stomach. I am hideously nervous.

Yesterday I got on the message board for the SMOE Fall 2009 teachers and I was shocked to see that a bunch of teachers received phone calls yesterday telling them that the SMOE had accidentally given out too many positions and they didn't actually have a job. As much as I am freaking out now, I cannot even imagine what those people are going through. It appears that these were mostly people who applied only recently, or weren't going to have their visa in time, or needed to come to orientation late, or who had the lowest level of qualifications (Level H). Since I applied back in April, have had my visa for over a month, will be at orientation on time, and have a higher level of qualification (Level E), I think I am fine. I toyed with the idea of calling Dave (my recruiter) yesterday to ask if I still had a job, and then I realized that if the answer was no, I didn't want to know! I have talked to a couple other Footprints people that I had been in contact with and they seem to be safe as well. I just hope the people who got cut had some back-up plan. I don't know what I would do! People have quit their jobs, invested tons of time and money, made plane reservations, etc. People are hundreds of dollars in the hole. I would be livid.

You know how little kids are constantly full of "what if" questions? I am constantly full of "but how" questions.

But how am I going to get used to not talking to my mom as often?

But how am I going to have enough money to live comfortably until I get my first paycheck on September 24?

But how am I going to be in contact with people before I get my Korean cell phone and my internet service hooked up?

But how am I going to do the things that come so naturally here: food shopping, getting from point A to point B on my own, paying bills?

But how am I going to survive a year? What was I thinking?!

I know that the answers to these things (and more) will reveal themselves after I arrive, but that doesn't really help me now. I am definitely struggling with the idea of not being able to be in close contact with people, especially my mom. My mom is absolutely one of my best friends. She is the first person I call when I am excited, or upset, or confused. She is the one I tell all my stories to, the one I am going to want to share this experience with real time. (Pause for bawling and a heart-to-heart with my mom.) Aggh, okay. No more. Only positive thoughts now.

Here is your positive closing thought for the evening. I am about to go pop some NyQuil gel-caps and fall into a (hopefully) dreamless sleep. Tomorrow morning the adventure begins.

My Friends Rule

Tonight my friends treated me to a wonderful dinner at The Melting Pot in Columbia. Not only do I have awesome friends from this area who attended/organized (Liz, Carl, Greg, Tristan, Anna, Debbie), but I also had some out of town visitors from New Jersey (Amanda), and Delaware (Jo Anna and her roomies: Stephanie, Ming and Joilene). We got a private party room (at least partially because we would have annoyed the heck out of any other paying customers, haha) that had balloons, a congratulations card for me signed by the staff, and fondue chocolates to take home. The meal was delicious...cheese fondue, salads, meats to cook hot pot style, chocolate fondue for desert, and a cake Liz made for me...and sooooo filling.

But even better than the food was the company. I know I have said before on here that I believe I have some of the best friends anyone could ask for, but I just want to reiterate that. When people ask me my strongest quality, I really think that it is the fact that I surround myself with really awesome people. I have intelligent, warm, caring, hilarious friends who mean the world to me. One of the things I am most concerned about in Korea is finding people that I click with. Liz reminded me that I made some great friends in college, which is definitely true, and insisted that I shouldn't worry. Still, I am terrified that I won't have anyone to eat dinner with, or go see some stupid movie with. Everyone keeps reminding me that there are 599 other teachers who are in the exact same situation as I am, and that we will all be looking to make friends quickly. When I went on SAS it was kind of the same situation, but I had Erin with me. I am really expanding my comfort zone by setting off on this adventure alone, and I am just really hopeful that everything turns out okay. I am going to miss my friends so very much. Please keep in touch guys! Don't forget about me because I'm on the other side of the world!

Going Away Dinner Numero Uno

Tonight I went out to dinner with the Hilltoppers at Catonsville Gourmet as a going away get together. Debbie and I met Kara, Robin, and Charlita there for a delicious dinner (and awesome BYOB wine from across the street). I basically got all caught up on changes that were probably going to be happening this year at Hilltop and what as gone on in everyone's summer. As crazy and obnoxious as it was at points, I recognize how lucky I was to teach at Hilltop Elementary for the last year and a half. While I had my disagreements with how things happened sometimes, overall it was a great experience that definitely taught me a LOT about working with kids- and adults. I had some fantastic team mates in my two SPED pals, Charlita and Debbie; a great speech-language pathologist, Kara; and a hilarious and straight shooting school psychologist, Robin. While there were definitely some ups and downs over the past year especially, I could not have asked for a better support system (or better people to vent to!). I am really going to miss you guys next year!

So...it is real now, huh?

Well, yesterday was a big day for me! As soon as I got out of summer school I headed over to Passport Health to get my final Japanese Encephalitis shot (woo!) and then sped down to Bowie to meet my dad who had offered to take me downtown for the second time in as many weeks. We zipped down to the embassy and I waited in line for just a few minutes before I got my passport, complete with a shiny new E-2 Visa! No really, it has a shiny seal. My name is spelled correctly, my birthday is accurate, and it is the right kind of visa, so I figure I am ALL SET.

While I was standing in line waiting to pick it up, I was listening to a large (and very loud) group of Americans sitting on the couches in the embassy discussing the process of getting things notarized and apostilled in order to meet the requirements for teaching abroad. I could certainly identify with everything that they said! It is a crazy process.

Last night my parents and I went out to a great Korean Restaurant (Goong Jeon)in Glen Burnie where we had a huge and filling meal. It was a good celebration to tie up the exciting day. Last night after coming home from dinner I took the last huge step as part of preparation: I booked my flight. EEE! Non-refundable, one-way tickets make everything a lot more real.

I fly out of BWI on Saturday, August 23 around 9:00am and head over to Chicago (about 2 hours on the plane). After a couple hour layover, I board a Korean Air flight into Seoul. I should arrive in Seoul at 4:00pm (their time, so 3:00am EST) on Sunday, August 23. In case you were wondering, that is just about a 14 hour flight. Which will be longer than my current longest flight, which was San Francisco to Shanghai in 13 hours. Should be fun...psych.

In other news, getting everything squared away with respect to bills, etc is a headache and a half! Here is what I learned about various businesses that I have accounts with:

1. USAA is, not surprisingly, wonderful. They are dropping my car insurance down to almost nothing while it is in storage and they have kick ass traveler's insurance for relatively cheap. I say it is not surprising that they were wonderful because I have never once had a bad experience with them, or found out that someone was getting a better rate from someone else. Since they primarily serve military families, they are used to people going abroad and are super supportive. Love them.
   
   
2. T-Mobile is awesome. They have a program where if you are being deployed by the military they will put your phone plan on hold for 18 months. If you are 6 months into your 2-year contract when you leave, you come back up to 18 months later and you are 6 months into your 2-year contract. The woman in the customer service department talked to her boss, and he approved it so I get the same deal as people abroad in the service! Sweet! You just play a $10/mo fee to keep your account active...which is no where near as steep as the $97/mo I thought I was going to have to pay!
   
   
3. Wachovia kind of sucks. Figuring out how to transfer money from my Korean bank account into my stateside accounts has been...nervous making, hahah. No, seriously, it is obnoxious. After lots of Internet research (for I am a master Googler) I have found that there are basically two ways to get money from there to here. You can take the sketcher option and buy American traveler's checks from your Korean bank and then send them home (which you are not allowed to do, technically), where someone has to forge your signature at your bank and then deposit them. This is basically free, but, clearly, a little sketch, and by sketch I mean borderline illegal. The second option is to wire money from Korea to your American bank account. This is the more popular, but more costly option. Western Union charges you up to TWENTY PERCENT of whatever you are wiring, which seems absurd. The Korean banks generally charge between 10,000 and 20,000 Won (around $7-14) to send whatever sum you need wired. That is totally doable. But, of course, then you get charged on the American end, also. So I called Wachovia, where I currently have an account to inquire about how much it costs to receive an international wire transfer. The answer: TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS EACH TIME. Whaaaaat? That is craaaaazy. That would run me around $300 for the year, just to get my money to the States.
   
   So I formulated a new plan. I found a bank that has branches both in South Korea and the United States (HSBC) and called them to see if I could open an account with them. I could just withdrawal the money from my Korean account and deposit into my international HSBC account. Perfect plan, right? Wrong. After speaking to the representatives at the HSBC in DC, I learned that the accounts in the US and abroad are unrelated and don't communicate. You would have to wire the money just like with any other unrelated accounts, and the American branch of HSBC charges THIRTY DOLLARS each time you send an international wire transfer. My hopes of an easy solution were dashed.
   
   Since I wasn't ready to fork over $300 over the course of a year, I started calling all the banks in my area. PNC and SunTrust charge $15 per international wire transfer, which sounded pretty good. Only $180 over the course of a year. Then I found a winner! Bank of America and Chevy Chase both only charge $10 per international wire transfer. Since Bank of America has national coverage in the US, I have decided to open an account with them. While switching banks is kind of a hassle, it is sooooo worth it since it will save me around $180 over the course of the next year.

Anyway, as you can see I have been uber busy. This week was the first time in the entire history of owning my phone that the battery got super low because I was talking on it so much!

It seems impossible that I leave for England/Ireland/Scotland/Wales two weeks from tomorrow and that I leave for Korea in just over a month. I have SO much to do. I am going to devote a lot of this weekend to packing so that I have some free time to hang out with people before I leave.

Visa on the way!

Yesterday I finally received my Notice of Appointment and final contracts, so today I schlepped my "Korea Binder" down to the consulate in DC to get my visa application processed. The Korean embassy has three buildings downtown, spread out over about a half mile of Massachusetts Ave. I first ended up at the KORUS House, which is an information center, but then I figured out how to get to the consulate.

After about a 10 minute wait I got up to the window and the man informed me that the visa application I had filled out was old and I needed to fill out a new one. Mind you, the second form looked EXACTLY LIKE THE ONE I BROUGHT IN, with some minor formatting changes. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I will assume that the Korean fine print said something that I couldn't read that explained the need for the new form.

After transferring the information from my nicely typed visa form to the one provided at the embassy, I went back up to the window where they took my application, checklist, contract and $45 and I was on my way. I can pick up my passport, complete with Korean E-2 visa, next Tuesday afternoon.

I guess that makes it kind of real now...right? Eesh.

Off we go…

The documents have been collected, the apostilles granted, and the contracts signed (twelve or thirteen times per copy). Everything has been sent off to Korea and has been certified as complete. So now I wait.

Overall, as I have talked to (aka: read comments on our Facebook group) people working with different agencies I have become more and more pleased with the experience I am having with Footprints Recruiting. They have been exceedingly professional and helpful since I began this process. They collected all of our documents up front and provided me with a fantastically detailed visa guide so that I knew exactly what needed to be done and how to get it done. And let me tell you…there was a lot to be done. But all that is behind me (for now) and we are just waiting for the Notice of Appointment to be sent out from the SMOE. Once we get that I can go about getting my visa and then my plane ticket.

It seems impossible that in almost exactly two months I will be getting on a plane and moving halfway around the world to South Korea. I am excited and nervous and god knows what else. Honestly I hadn’t given myself a chance to be nervous at all until the other day I was reading one of my favorite blogs from a teacher in Korea, who also happens to be A Geek in Korea. I love reading his blog because it is really honest, includes a lot of interesting (and often quirky) stories, and it has a lot of helpful teaching tips and strategies from someone “in the trenches.” Anyway, I was reading an old entry and it was the first truly negative one I had read on his site. I know that it was written at the end of a long day, and it was probably just the frustrated rantings that come out when the straw breaks the camel’s back, but it caught me off guard. I think the part of the entry that got to me the most was when he talked about going to eat lunch at the coffee shop. This is a guy who has lived and taught in Korea for multiple years, can speak and understand Korean in conversations, and is married to a Korean woman. And yet he hit the wall of frustration with having no one to talk to and share ideas with. “I’ve started leaving for lunch and working in coffeeshops because I can’t stand being with these noisy people. I also have no one to speak English to. They converse exclusively in Korean about boring Korean things like the beauty of different models. I’d rather spend 4,000 on some sweetened coffee and not have to deal with those topics of conversations. I miss having a foreign coworker to bounce ideas off of, or to blow off some stress with a complaint.” It is almost guaranteed that I will be the only native speaker English teacher (NSET) at my school. I know that I am pretty out-going and get along with a wide variety of people, but I do have moments of worry that I won’t find someone that I click with during that whirlwind first week of orientation and then I’ll be thrown into Seoul to fend for myself.

That is a scary thought. As much as I whole-heartedly look foward to immersing myself in another culture, I know I’ll need some people with common backgrounds to vent to and share experiences with. Hopefully this Facebook group will allow me to connect with some people before I leave so that we can form those bonds even quicker.

In other news, the title “Korean for Dummies” makes it sound significantly easier than it is. I can say “Hello” ("Annyong haseyo”…shout out to Arrested Development fans!), “Thank you” (”Kamsahamnida”), and I can count from 1-100 (which you’ll just have to trust me on). I can only say the names of the numbers in order fluently…if you ask me to translate a specific number it takes me a minute or two to figure out what it would be. But hey, it is a start…right?


<3Meaghan