Plane Tickets

The academy fowarded my visa confirmation number to me on Thursday evening, and instructed me to contact my nearest Korean consulate to schedule an interview. The issue of which training session I would be scheduled for came up again (whether March 3rd or 10th), and it was finally decided that if the consulate could not have my visa issued by this Friday, I would be scheduled for the March 10th session. If that were the case, I was told, I should buy my tickets to Korea for anywhere between the 7th and the 9th.

Upon contacting the consulate yesterday morning, I found out that official appointments aren't necessary. Personal interviews for E-2 visas are conducted every Wednesday between 9 and 10 AM. In other words, I just need to show up. Katie and I discovered that any round trip iteneraries from Denver to San Francisco next week had risen to nearly $500 -way out of the question as far as our budget is concerned. However, the following week looked much better. I ended up buying a round trip ticket for Tuesday, February 26th (for the far more reasonable sum of $183), and plan to be at the consulate bright and early the following morning.

Incidentally, I asked the person in charge of the visa section to list the items I need to bring along. Among them he mentioned that I should bring my diploma. I explained to him that I have already sent my diploma to Korea. This was not a problem, he responded, just bring a copy. Yeah... I didn't think to make a copy before I sent it. To my relief, he said that a transcript would suffice.

As by Friday evening it was already the weekend in Korea, I knew that I wouldn't be able to speak with the academy until Sunday night. While I would have preferred to ere on the side of caution by speaking to them just once more before "pulling the trigger" and buying our tickets to Korea, airfare was rising too quickly for me to feel comfortable waiting until next week. Katie and I bought our one-way tickets yesterday evening, and will be leaving on March 7th. We felt lucky to pay only $614 for each ticket.

So now we have an extra week before we leave, which is certainly not a bad thing. We have already begun packing and have made a couple of trips to the storage unit. But there are all kinds of other things that need to be taken care of: Suspending (or cancelling) cell phones, suspending vehicle insurance, changing our address, buying travel insurance, etc. It's easy to feel overwhelmed at this stage, even though we anticipated the stress. But I think Katie and I are both relieved to have all the plane tickets taken care of, and to know for certain the date we will be leaving the country.