A Contract Signed

Last weekend Kyle and I went snow-shoeing in the Indian Peaks wilderness. The temperature was not really very cold, but it was incredibly windy. As you can see, the snow was quite deep. After a brief period of early cloudiness, the weather cleared out and it turned out to be a beautiful day.

A lot has happened since the last post. First things first: I have accepted a job with the English school that I referenced in the previous post. A couple of days ago I signed the contract and scanned it to my contact at the school via email. They want me to be part of a training session in Seoul that begins March 3rd. The job itself will begin March 17th. I still need to mail all my documents to the school so that my visa can be processed; I plan to have them in the mail by Monday.


As you can see, the occasion was so momentous that it prompted Katie to take a photograph of me signing the contract. The particular branch at which I will be teaching is located in Changwon, a city located about 30 miles east of Busan ("World Best City: High tech city good for corporate business, cultural city full of joy, green city always clean and blue"). To be honest, I feel much better about living in Changwon than I did about the prospect of living in Ulsan. Changwon is home to approximately a half million people, so it is relatively small. Here are a couple of aerial photos of Changwon that I found online:




Until recently, an item of concern for me has been how to go about processing Katie's visa. My visa (E-2, a work visa for foreign language teachers) will be sponsered and handled by the school. But Katie will require an F-3 (dependent) visa. I have been afraid that we would have to apply for both visas at the same time which, of course, would be difficult if the school were handling my visa independently. Unfortunately, neither the school nor the recruiter were very helpful in answering this question for me (both said they didn't know the proper procedure), so yesterday I put in a phone call to the Korean consulate in San Fransisco. I was informed, much to my relief, that Katie can enter Korea on a tourist visa, and later change her status to F-3 at the local immigration office. And, importantly, she will not have to exit and re-enter the country.

Katie and I both had our last day of work on Friday (stand by for a seperate post regarding that), so we are now enjoying the weekend and preparing for our trip to Seattle tomorrow. When we return, we likely immediately begin putting our things into storage.