My trip to Guam and Squids in Seoul

Last week, I had to take a trip to Guam so I could get my E2 visa which is required for me to teach English.  I arrived on Friday morning at around 4:00 AM and I left Sunday morning at 2:00 AM.  The whole process was fairly painless and I was able to get everything done on Friday.  The rest of the time I just watched the NCAA tournament and went swimming in the ocean.  Guam is a major tourist location for Koreans and Japanese people.  There were not many Americans who were not involved with the military.  

This is a picture of the Korean consulate.  It was in the most random neighborhood.  The taxi driver turned down this alley in not the best area.   I started to wonder if he knew where he was going when I spotted the Korean flag.  I turned in my documents at 9:00 AM and they had my E2 visa for me by 4:00 PM.  

I stayed in a Holiday Inn Resort.  It was decent.  Below is the view from my balcony.  

Sidlo was in Seoul for the last month doing some training for the Air Force.  He was stationed about 2 hours south of Seoul so we did not have an opportunity to meet up until last weekend.  Unfortunately for me, I was in Guam so just Kim and Joe met up last Saturday.  Joe has another friend working here in Seoul named Andrew.  You can see him in the pictures below.  Joe spent the night at our apartment that night so I was able to see him when I got back Sunday morning.

I have no idea what Joe is doing in this picture but apparently he thinks its hilarious.

This is a picture on Andrew.  

It is very common for Koreans to throw up the peace sign when posing for a picture.  Kim and Joe were just trying to fit in.

It was nice seeing one of our friends from the US and both Kim and I are excited to see our parents when they come to visit this summer.

He's baaaaack!!

Just in case anyone's wondering, Mark is back in Korea with his shiny new visa. He has some pictures, so I'll have him put together a post soon!

Shady recruiters, teacher workshops, and sunny beaches

Overall, our time working has been good. The director of Poly and her staff seem to be pretty fair and honest. Despite the long work days, we haven't really experienced any of the hagwon nightmare stories that seem so prevalent on the ESL teacher message boards. 

So, basically our experience thus far has been very good EXCEPT...

Our experience with our recruiter, Appletree Recruiting. Mark and I would not recommend them to anyone for any reason whatsoever. First of all, the staff we interacted with could barely speak English. Not a good thing for a company whose sole source of income is placing English speaking teachers in Korean schools. Also, once they placed us at Poly School they just sort of faded out of the picture. They are responsible for helping us secure our visa's so we can work, but they provided no assistance or advice to me in securing my F4 visa. And as for Mark's E2 visa..................

When we first applied at Poly through Appletree, we made it very clear to both institutions that we intended to arrive in Korea about a month or two before we started working. So in order to get the visa cheaply through the Chicago office, Appletree would need to start working on the E2 visa application ASAP. Mark sent all his paperwork to Appletree's Colorado office via priority mail and we waited.... and waited.... and heard nothing. Finally, about a week before we were supposed to leave for Korea, Mark contacted Appletree to check on the status of the visa. Many excuses were given, but bottom line was they forgot about it. They told us not to worry and that we could just take care of this in Korea. Not ideal since it would require a visa run to China or Japan, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Once we got in Korea, we had a little correspondence with Appletree, asking Mark to send and resend copies of various visa paperwork - yeah, they needed copies of the stuff that he already sent a month prior via priority mail, we figured they were pretty disorganized at this point. 

Mark is now approaching the 90 day limit on his tourist pass to Korea and needs to secure his E2 by April to stay here. So last week we received word that there was a mistake on his visa issuance number. It's an American number, so a simple trip to Japan or China won't work. And there's not enough time to get another number. So Mark is heading off to the nearest American territory, which would be Guam. Of course, this is a more expensive trip. He was able to convince the school to foot half of the bill since this mistake is on their recruiter's side. (Though Appletree called Mark the other day to berate him and basically place the blame on everyone else under the sun besides themselves: Mark, Poly, their grandmother's dog... talk about a professional organization.)

Anywho, there's a bright side to this. Mark is leaving tonight (Thursday) at 9:30 for this paradise. I think it's 80 degrees right now. I'm insanely jealous. His flight back to Korea is Sunday morning at 4am. I'm not jealous of that. :)

And the best part (for him) is that we have a mandatory all day teacher's workshop on Saturday for Poly. So while I'll be sitting in boring day-long presentations, Mark will be relaxing on the sunny beaches of Guam...

I've tasked him with taking a lot of pictures so we can all live vicariously through him. So hopefully there'll be a gorgeous blog post to come in the near future! Stay tuned!