Seosanites Unite -- Foreigners on Facebook

Last Thursday night, I rode my bicycle to the Family Mart (Korea's version of the ubiquitous 7-Eleven) near Seosan's movie theater, to meet my good friend Chetty for a mid-week drink and chat. I had sent out an invite to several of the other foreigners that I've befriended in my few months here, and was expecting to see at least a couple of familiar faces sitting under the big, blue, plastic umbrellas on the corner when I pulled up. But I was bemused and surprised to instead find nearly a dozen strangers, including a couple of fresher-than-fresh recruits -- a cute young couple from the U.K., who had literally just arrived in Korea the day prior.

Over the next hour or so of laidback chatter, I realized how much things have changed since I arrived here nearly 3 1/2 months ago... And how my perceptions of Seosan as a small-town, off-the-beaten-path kind of place -- where I'd scarce cross paths with another foreigner for perhaps weeks on end -- has changed as well. I chose to come to Seosan for more reasons, obviously, than a high-rolling social life -- its charms (for me, at least) lay in its supreme accessibility to mountains and the coast, and its decent proximity to the action in Seoul (1h40 by bus isn't bad). Here, I thought, I'll have time to contemplate, meditate, and make progress on a number of personal projects that really don't require involvement by anyone other than myself. And I figured I could live with that, at least for a contract-length year. If I found myself going stir-crazy by that time, I'd just pick up and move on.

As time has passed, though, and as fate has led me smack-dab into the path of one foreigner after another, I've realized that living in Seosan really isn't quite as solitary as I had once imagined. Which isn't a bad thing, at all. It's been an education in human psychology to see how social boundaries that would exist under normal circumstances seem to all but completely fold when members of an absolute minority (such as the foreigners working as English teachers here) meet. It's almost as if we create our own little network not so much for friendship and comraderie, as for support and sanity. Getting together for a late-night conversation in the middle of the work-week, sitting on a street corner amid the trailing taillights of taxi-cabs and neon signs of nearby storefronts, we bond almost without consciousness, as if reaching out to others who also don't "fit" somehow restores our sense of belonging.

After getting home that night, I decided it was time to create an "official network" for all of us Seosan folks, especially so that the new people coming here could have a resource to tap to ease their adjustment. I've lived overseas before, and I know it can be a roller-coaster of a ride, trying to adjust to a new culture, strange foods, an incomprehensible language, and the hundreds of instances, large and small, that separate you from your former world and your place in it. It can all be quite overwhelming. Thanks to Facebook, anyone living in or around Seosan, South Korea, can find, with one click of a button, 25 other instant friends (and surely more to be found, as we get pulled into one another's paths).

And tonight, after connecting via our new Facebook group, "I Live in Seosan (and Surrounds)", about a dozen of us met together for a few rounds of bowling in Seosan's nightlife district. It was again a treat to just unwind and be social without the need to navigate language or cultural boundaries. Even if I do suck at bowling.

And I'm eager to see where this little social experiment of a foreigner community will go over time.... Will we organize activities and meet-ups more regularly? Will our numbers continue to grow? Will we find among ourselves the solution to one of the largest hurdles foreigners face while living abroad: finding a niche and filling social needs? Or will involvement in our own "exclusive foreigner circle" extricate ourselves even more from fitting in to our surroundings? Time will tell... in the meantime, I guess I better start learning a thing or two about bowling!

I'm an Alien!

Wow, as of today, I believe all of the bureacracy of setting up life in Korea is done! Visa, check. Mobile phone, check. Foreign Residency Card... check! (It came in the mail Friday!!) And this morning, bank account, check.
Getting the Foreign Residency Card (aka my "green card") turned out not to be too painful, but with Korea's recent upgrade of requirements for incoming language teachers, there was a lot of runaround as most of the key people who are supposed to enforce the new requirements don't quite know what they're doing.
Take, for instance, my visit to the hospital just a few days after arriving. When my boss explained to the receptionist that I needed blood and urine testing for (for communicable diseases and drugs), they looked wide-eyed and a bit confused, and then began a string of phonecalls to find out what to do with me. From there on out, the experience was painless. The hospital was quite new and not especially busy. The medical workers seemed quite professional. And aside from having to carry my "sample" back to the nurse in an open container (plastic cup!), everything was on the up and up.
Harrison and I returned to the hospital this past Tuesday for the results of my testing. Everything was clear, which was not surprising but still a relief. (I've wondered what my recourse would be if my results came back with some question... would I be deported without further analysis? Did I have any recourse? Some things are better not messed with, and I was rather glad at least this part of my "initiation process" was straightforward.) We did, however, have to wait for quite some time again while the hospital staff tried to figure out what kind of documentation to give us. It seems I am the first foreigner to this hospital to request testing for alien status. I knew Seosan was small, but I didn't think it was THAT small!
After leaving the hospital, Harrison drove me to Taean's (next city over) Immigration Office, where I filled out a bunch of forms and left my passport in their careful protection. And apparently they processed me quickly, because Friday night, I had my green card in hand! It really helps to have a boss who is watching out for me -- I have read of quite a few experiences of English teachers in China who find out only too late that their visas, which their bosses were apparently attending to, never materialized, and they are forced to leave the country. Nothing like that here... fortunately :) I have to say, I am impressed with the efficiency of things in Korea. I guess we're getting off to a pretty good start!

My Battle with Bureacracy

Living in Korea Lesson #1: Never underestimate the amount of bureaucracy involved in getting your E2 visa!!
This process that I started literally 3 months ago is still not yet finished, despite the fact that I am actually here in Korea! After a quite lengthy, somewhat confusing, an often nerve-wracking paper shuffle, and a little good karma, I managed to get the green light to step onto Korean soil. Here is my E-2 visa two-step, in a nutshell (written especially for all of you who I know are secretly thinking, I want to teaching in Korea!! But... where do I start??):
The early part of the process involved applying for a new passport (my passport from my Round-the-World trip in 2006 was "seriously mutilated," according to the postal worker taking my application), which meant ordering a new birth certificate and getting my picture snapped. Then I had to arrange for fingerprinting at my local police station and forward them to the FBI with a request for my criminal report. Being that I was in Utah and my diploma was buried somewhere in a box in my parents' house in Pennsylvania, I next had to contact my university for a new diploma and multiple sealed transcripts. And then I waited... and waited... and waited.
The first to arrive was my new passport, which was utterly amazing. Without expediting my order, I received it in a week's time (when are government agencies EVER ahead of schedule?? I was amazed.). I was impressed with he new passport layout -- pages watermarked with symbols of American pride and heritage, and encoded with a microchip, plus biometric scanning capability of my passport photo. Most exciting was that they had returned my mutilated passport to me (I was told I wouldn't get it back)... so all of the stamps I acquired from stomping around Europe and Morocco) are mine to keep!! Then the diploma and transcripts arrived. And finally, the FBI report. As it turns out, they took me off the "Most Wanted" list. OK, kidding, I'm still on it. You would think that a report from the FBI would be "proof enough" for Korean Immigration. But no, they require a special seal to be affixed to your report, which is called an apostille. I'd never heard of one before, but apparently, after some such Hague Convention a few years back, a system was agreed upon for authenticating documents for international recognition. Quite a few countries now required that documents be authenticated with an apostille. As this is a fairly new requirement, I got quite a bit of run-around from the US Authentications Office (in Wash. D.C.) and the office of Utah's Secretary of State. No one wanted to take responsibility for helping me out. In the end, Utah came through. I had my documents notarized by a local notary, and then forwarded them to Mr. Sec'y of State for the official apostille. And you guessed it, waiting again to get them back in hand.
The next step was to FedEx my documents to Korea. OK, I way underestimated the cost of this! Copies of my passport, check. 3½ x 4½ cm photos, check. Diploma and transcripts, check. Resume, check. Employment contract, check. Criminal report, check. And last but not least, Korea's Medical Self-Evaluation Form, check. Sending this tidy little stack of papers over the Pacific set me back a handsome $78. And for that princely sum, it still took 4 days to be received!
Are we done yet? Oh, not even close :) So, Korean Immigration processed my documents and sent me a Visa Issuance Number. The next step was to forward another set of documents to the closest Korean Embassy within the U.S. (which happened to be San Francisco), along with this Visa Issuance Number, visa application, my actual passport, and of course, more money... followed by more waiting.
Normally, the embassy requires that you visit in person for an interview with a Consul (this is an official requirement for your E-2 work visa). Because I was living in Utah at the time, the embassy waived this requirement and allowed me to conduct my interview via telephone. (One word of warning: please CALL the embassy to make sure they received and are processing your visa... mine was lost in a paper shuffle in their office for almost a week while precious time ticked by. When I called, they told me they hadn't yet received it, and only later after I had confirmed delivery with USPS, did they find it!)
After completing my interview, the Embassy finished processing my visa, and then shipped my passport + visa back to me. I received it on Saturday, June 7th, just a few days before leaving the country. The whole process took about 2.5 months. (Note: If you're serious about teaching in Korea, go ahead and order your FBI report and university transcripts, dig out your diploma (or order a new one), and make sure your passport is valid. Having these in your back pocket makes you a much more attractive candidate and saves you quite a bit of time waiting, once you find your "dream job.")
That's it for this installment. Stay tuned for Part II, getting your Foreign Residency Card :)