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.