Hoops

Those with home I have kept in better touch know that I was originally slated to go to Taiwan. I applied back in the middle of June with Footprints Recruiting, based in Canada. The lure of using a recruiting agency was that they could take care of the details and I would just get to go. With all the paperwork and back and forth I have gone through to prepare for a job overseas, I can't imagine what it would have been like on my own.So the original plan was to go to Taiwan, teach there and leave August 14th. Footprints thought I was a good candidate, and so did Taiwan's Ministry of Education. However, the Council on Labor affairs, the Taiwanese agency charged with issuing visas did not think I had enough English credits to teach English in Taiwan. I did not find this out though until a week before I was slated to go.
So, I got transferred over to the Korea department at Footprints and am will on my way to head there. Although the Korean bureaucracy seems to be willing to accept me, I have a few more hoops through which to jump. I have to give them an original copy of my diploma, sealed transcripts, and then the normal copy of my passports and two passport-sized photos, etc. While Taiwan did not like my English education, they did at least allow me to send scanned copies of all of that info.

Oh well, this is just a preview of things to come. I’m sure that I’ll have plenty of stories to post about dealing with the culture: my first trip to the post office, my first trip to a Korean Wal-Mart, and then of course there’s the school thing too.