Korea: Change of plans. Waiting for my visa number

If you asked me a few months ago, I definitely wouldn't have guessed how things would turn out.

In May and June I took a TEFL certification course.  I loved the course and got really pumped up about teaching English abroad. I used the teacher placement service provided by the TEFL company and also applied to different schools in Japan by myself.  Unfortunately, my job search in Japan wasn't going well. After a few interviews with no luck, I decided to expand my job search to other countries.

Well, here’s the situation so far. I signed a contract for a job in South Korea a few weeks ago. I sent a bunch
of documents to my school there, which were then forwarded on to immigration.  I’m waiting to get my Visa Issuance number from immigration.

After I get my Visa Issuance number, I have to go to Chicago to meet the Korean consulate for a short interview regarding my qualifications and intentions. After that, the consulate processes some more paperwork and issues a visa within about 5 days.

I live over 8 hours away from Chicago, so I’m going to have to take a flight and everything.. it’s going to be quite the ordeal.

My school wants me to depart December 26th. We’ll see if it happens!

A much-needed update.

It's been entirely too long since I posted here, so an update is in order.

I left Japan in July of 2008.  I have so much that I never wrote about and I feel like I'm just too far behind to catch up, so I'm going to have to apologize about that. I won't be writing about the last few months of my time in Japan, because it's not really the same to write it in such retrospect.

So, at the moment I'm at my university, finishing my last semester.  I audited a Japanese course last semester to keep my skills up, but this semester I'm too busy with other classes, I can't afford to take Japanese as well.

So, to keep up I'm watching a lot of Japanese movies on netflix, trying to keep  in communication on sites like mixi so I can practice reading and writing, and using some software. I recently found the websites www.iknow.co.jp which has some useful daily lessons.  In addition I play a few Nintendo DS games, mostly kanji games, that help me keep my kanji literacy up.

As for Japan, I'm planning on returning sometime this year. I graduate May 9th, and I'm enrolling in a TEFL certification course that goes from May 30th to June 14th.  I'm ready to leave for Japan at any time after that. I'm going to be applying to AEON and ECC and Amity.

My goal is to make it back to Japan before the end of the year. I'm actually aiming to make it back before September, but if that fails, before 2010.

I won't have any updates until I actually apply to those companies, but I'll try to udpate it here play-by-play for anyone interested in following in my footsteps.