donde?

There was some confusion, and the title of the blog becomes prophesy. We aren't in Korea yet, it's true. We're extremely close now, though. One 12-hour flight kind of close. We take in the sunshine in what appears to be a perfect summer day in San Francisco. We can only guess from our view from the mammoth airport windows. Soon we'll see unknown places, live in the unfamiliar. It is an exciting time.

Thanks to all of you for helping us. Next post will be from our Asian outpost!

photo courtesy of Ida, our new friend in Burlington, VT

certain harsh aspects (w/hopeful denouemont)

While living out of the U.S. for a year has its great merits, there are certain things that make us well up with tears at the thought of leaving. Being so far from the family & friends is high on the list, of course, that’s why we’ve tried to visit so many of our loved ones before taking off. We compose this in Burlington, Vermont, after a week of spending the q.t. with KM’s sister and family.

and w/ Julio's big sister's family in Maryland

But something else important to us is the music of our favorite singers, particularly in concert. Chief among them is Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Don’t let the name fool you, allow it to give you strong clues to the mad frolicking mystery of Bonnie’s singular brand of folk.

BPB, staking territorial claims of our collective heart

BK, our man in Oly, provided me recently with a review of a BPB concert in Seattle we had to miss due to our absence. Our hearts flooded with covetous joy at the thought of experiencing the wily Bonnie making melodic mischief in our presence. I reprint here, with no permission, the main point of the review:

dude!


best concert ever last night.

BK

When it comes down to it, the things we remember and hold dear are the seemingly minor. The familiar streets we walk to work, the cafes who know your drink before you order it, the evenings spent at the dinner table perfecting a ridiculous joke about goats and kidnapping, geeking out over the music we dig. You get the gist. Despite our melancholy, we know new found gems await in Korea. There are rumors of KM and Julio finding a hot rhythm section and starting a SoKo pop rock group. Perhaps we aren't breaking into teaching, but pop stardom. Look out, Bonnie.  

wherein we achieve legitimate status

We arrived in NYC about a week ago with a mission: interview at the Korean consulate to get our visas, which allow one to stay and work in a country for a specified period. 
We prepared the paperwork during the days leading up to our scheduled interview. When the morning arrived, bagel desire got the best of us, and after a Park Slope bagel hunt (where coffee from Portland, Oregon's Stumptown roasters was also captured-double score!), we found ourselves with little time to prepare ourselves, and, upon leaving the house, realized we might be missing a couple crucial documents. This was after both Julio and KM had strived to always be, as in the parlance of their time, on top of their shit, every 'I' dotted and all that.
On the subway, we tried to calm the nerves, steady ourselves, right our spiritual ship.

We realized on the way that we had everything we needed for the interview. We became calm and brave, yet we knew anxiety is often around mysterious bends, particularly in big cities and government offices where the fates of mere kids like us are often not even the smallest glimmer of a speck of a thought to the movers and shakers.

We needn't have worried. Success was ours, after a fee of course. KM had it easy in her interview. I faced questions concerning my teaching abilities, why Korea?, are you and KM married? engaged? I don't even get this kind of grilling from my family! We both tried to break the ice with the traditional Korean greeting 'An nyoung hasayo', essentially 'Hello', but this fellow was all business. I suppose he does have the security of his nation in mind, but do we look like trouble? (Readers, consider this question rhetorical, but, if you must, respond where appropriate, citing of past experiences won't be necessary.)

YAY, US!

where some previously perfectly content Pacific Northwest residents become int'l job hunters

As my first task, allow me to catch you up: K.M. and I are going to South Korea. For the last four plus years I’ve called Olympia, Washington home. I’ve made some of my best friends there, and the Pacific Northwest is a wonder of landscape, food, and music. K.M., my girlfriend, had lived in Olympia for about 6 years (“I’ve moved every six years of my life.”) In March of this year we were walking on the Westside of Olympia, both of us describing how we were ready for a change but neither of us could afford it.

“We should teach English in Korea,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” K.M. said.

About a month later, we began to seriously consider teaching English as a possibility. There’s a lot a plusses: free travel to Asia, double the pay we were making in the U.S., and the chance to stand in front of a group of kids who don’t know most of what you’re saying. Also playing minor roles in the decision were abundant kimchi and Korean pop. We sifted through recruiters on the web, searched message boards for rants about bad schools and radical little cities, and started to put our visa paperwork together.

One day, K.M. was at work, and I sent her a text message: “Hey what do you think about leaving for the east coast on July 21? I found one-way tickets for CHEAP”. I got the tickets, and we had a leaving date. The plan was to visit family on the east coast and depart from Philadelphia after our visa went through.

We hooked up with a recruiter we liked and started to learn that many of the rules were changing for getting teaching work in Korea. Hagwons, the private schools which have popped up all over the peninsula in the last twenty years, hoping to get some more assurance of a good investment, have begun asking their teaching candidates to jump through a few more hoops to secure positions at their schools. We learned that the WA state criminal background checks we just got might not be good enough. Nation-wide checks, which can take up to three months to process, would very soon be the norm. Also, sending our original diplomas might not be an option soon, because notarized copies somehow were more legitimate. The notarization would have to take place in the state the diploma was from, not a problem for K.M., who still lived in Washington after attending The Evergreen State College. But for me, I would have to go across the country to New Jersey to visit a notary there. On top of this, many of these documents need an additional document attached called an apostille, which is like another kind of notarization for international papers.

Thus, we had many questions and concerns, and we frantically emailed back and forth with our recruiter over the course of a few days in early July. We still hadn’t gotten an interview with a school, and as our Oly end-date neared, we began to fear, as international job-seekin' f-ups, we would be arriving jobless on the east coast, burdening our families and inflating our credit cards bills while pondering an uncertain future. "I guess we're moving to Philadelphia," became my refrain to all my friends, who were most likely as weary as we were after weeks of this Korea job talk.

Finally, on July 12, we got word that there was an opening for two teachers at a school in the southwest corner of South Korea in a smallish city of two hundred thousand (we're still trying to figure out if it's ok-to preserve anonymity-to name this city). Apparently, because we had been emailing our recruiter so much we were the first ones they thought to recommend. We interviewed that evening over the phone and when we received emails late that night from our recruiter we felt a weigh lifted. The subject read: GREAT NEWS AFTER PHONE INTERVIEW JULIO AND K.M. WIN JOB. We felt like the division champs for sure.

We spent the next nine days packing, wrapping up our jobs, and saying our goodbyes to friends. Much spirited dining, drinking, dancing, and daydreaming when we'd see our friends again ensued. My dad and step-mom also visited for the first time since I had moved to the west coast. Though we were sad to leave our good friends, it all felt close to closure. All things considered, we went out on top in Olympia. A group of splendid people with welcome arms (and our overflowing storage unit) ensure our inevitable return.