Time for an emergency passport? Yes this is real.

This week has been full of emotions for me. From elation and excitement to sinking depression to nagging, terrible stress to relief and excitement again. I feel an obligation to write this post as a cautionary tale to those planning to fly out and don't know what I've learned.

I'm really excited about our trip around Southeast Asia that's coming up in September. So usually when I have a few spare minutes, I start researching things to do in the places we'll go and booking hostels and writing down things. I was working on Cambodia Sunday night, and it was sometime after I read about the fried tarantulas (not on my bucket list but that's cool) that I stumbled across some information. Someone in a forum advised to make sure you are able to get a Cambodian visa. With google's help, I realized that you need an extra 6 or more months on your passport from the date of entry in order to get into the country. "Oh no," I thought. "My visa expires in January! How fast can I get it renewed!"(google google) "Oh okay. I have enough time to do it after we get back from Bali in a week and a half. Phew." Then I thought about it and wondered who else might have this random, arbitrary rule.

The answer? ... All of them.

All of the countries we're visiting (in fact most of the world's vacation destinations it looks like) require at least 6 months left on your passport before it expires if you're visiting. Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand... Indonesia. Indonesia. I hurriedly checked the expiry date on my passport again. January 15th. We arrive on the 27th. I was off by 12 days. Seth and I then spent a good hour in forums and government websites checking and double and triple checking the rules with other people's experience, and yes, this is a real thing, and yes, they are usually pretty strict about it. If we don't meet validity requirements, we could be turned away from the plane before boarding or worse, sent back to Korea as soon as we got into Denapasar, a 7-hour flight one way. The next hour was spent trying to figure out how to get a valid US passport in less than a week while you're out of the country. If we were in the States, the whole thing could have been fixed in 24-48 hours, of course for a price but nevertheless done. But as most experiences in Korea, it's not so straightforward here. I had to get to Seoul by Friday to see if I could convince them that I needed an emergency passport. I made an appointment at the Embassy and apologized to my boss in advance for not being able to come to work that day. The most information I found on the internet was that I had to prove I was flying in the subsequent 72 hours. An email from the embassy said they could not guarantee anything and I would have to show up at my appointment to "explain" my "need for travel."

I was pretty terrified of what might happen at the Embassy. In my head, I saw a judgy officer shaking his head and rolling his eyes at a desk saying "This isn't an emergency. You just want to go on vacation. You should have KNOWN about the visa requirements, and it's not our fault you didn't. Emergency passports are given for things like a death in the family, a medical situation or other dire circumstances. You're wasting valuable American time." (With a disgusted expression) "There's nothing I can do for you."
The Patrice in my head then countered/pleaded: "I haven't had a vacation in 8 months. I swear I would have done this earlier the right way if I'd known. I didn't want to go on an 8-hour round trip in the middle of the week (sacrificing valuable gym time notwithstanding)! This was my only choice given the emount a time I had. I could have gotten it done much easier if I was on US soil. Please help me out." And then I start to cry pitifully while the officer goes over my paperwork with a pessimistic face.

But actually my experience was almost downright pleasant. The US Embassy website says it is their main responsibility to serve American citizens abroad and they are not joking. I spent the night in a nearby hotel and when I walked there in the morning I found a long, tall concrete building which was not what I picture when I hear "embassy" at ALL. It was not beautiful. There were at least 100-200 Koreans lined up around it for visas. Above them every several meters was a sign that read: "American Citizens do not wait in this line. Go to the front of the line." So I got to walk past ALL the people standing in the rain and a nice old man brought me to the front. I went through security and checked my phone at the door, then walked in. Apparently this wasn't the area into which all the Koreans were being admitted because the room was completely empty -- they had just opened. I was told to grab a number at a machine and waited for a window to open. In the 15 minutes I had before my appointment, people started trickling in and I got to warn another American about the passport thing, which surprised him too. He was there to get a notarization, which they also do there. Finally my number was called. I walked to a window, said I needed an emergency limited validity passport and handed them all the paperwork including my flight itinerary. The woman checked the information and sent me to a payment window. I paid $110 and then eventually got called to another window where I had to take an oath that everything I said would be true. Not sure what I testified to, but in any case I nearly left having accomplished nothing. The man told me he could give me a passport with 6 months validity, and I thought, "hmm that's funny. It's not a year." Then I walked away. Then I ran BACK to the window and said, "Wait, my passport will be valid for 6 months from TODAY?" "... yes." "Okay. I need it to be valid for six months from Sunday. That's when I enter the country." "Oh, I'm pretty sure I can extend it another month or two. Good catch," said the window man.

I was called back to the window about 20 minutes later to find my new friend had kept my new passport valid for 10 months! That was awesome. Then, noticing it was thin, "Oooh. I see this only has 6 pages... hmmm that's not enough for my travels around Southeast Asia..." I said, pushing my luck. He said they don't let you add pages to these passports. Damn. So when I get back from Bali I have to send in my new passport and get another one. But that's OK. At least I know where I'm going this weekend! Denpasar, watch out! You're about to get Patty-Teacher/Sesse-Teacher-stormed. Back to Seoul I go in 40 hours.

It's almost time.

In 42 days, we will be done working in Korea.

In seven days, we go on a Bali vacation.

In 43 days, we leave for our trip around Southeast Asia.

I haven't updated much but I really want to do it in Asia.

Here's our itinerary:
1 week in Japan (because it's probably going to cost us more than all the other countries combined)
2 weeks in Nepal (still need to work on this part)
3 weeks in Vietnam
1-2 weeks in Cambodia
2 weeks in Thailand.

We have 90L backpacks into which we will pack all our worldly possessions and yesterday we sent home enormous 35lb. boxes by ship. They'll take about 2 months to get there but we'll be on our adventure then anyway. When we got to the post office with them, the women working there had us fill out three different forms not because it was necessary, but because they kept giving us the wrong shipping form. It was like a circus watching them try to figure it all out. Just another reason we're ready to go.

Why are we so tired of working in Korea? We accepted long ago that the only reason our school makes so much money is because there are white native English speakers there. That's how so many schools here make their money. But it wasn't until recently that we realized at our hagwon we're kind of like migrant workers: we do the job none of the Koreans would want to do because it's simply too many hours. Yes we got our flight paid for and enough money for a tiny apartment, and yes our boss acquiesces to some of our requests since we're considered "veteran" teachers at the school. But not one of the Korean English teachers has as many classes as we do in one day, and we really work at two schools: 6 classes at the Kindergarten in the morning, then 4 classes at the after-school academy in the afternoon. We also teach the most hours out of all the foreign teachers at the school. I asked our boss a while ago if he could please take away one of my classes at the afternoon school so I don't feel like I'm running a marathon every day and his response was a typically vague Korean "Well, you guys asked to be off by a certain time every day, and I give my best teachers all the classes, but maybe after the semester change" which basically translates to "haha fuck you, no way." So we're over it. Other hagwons have better setups where you only work at one school and a 45-minute class is treated as an hour of work. But not our hagwon, nope. Forty minutes of class time is 40 minutes, and a lunch break is a lunch break, and the 20 minute snack time is not teaching time. So much working makes us bitter toward everything inconvenient around us, like the old lady in the grocery store yesterday who was staring at me and when I looked at her she looked away, but as soon as I stopped looking at her she looked at me again. I confronted her gaze and she smiled and said "pretty!" in Korean but I know she's just curious about my different features and whiter skin. We will always be the "others" in Korea. The Korean word for "foreigner" is pronounced "waygook." It's also the word for "alien." The word for "monster" is "gwaymool" and I think it's no coincidence that there are some similarities. But I was never really bitter about a foreign country before I came to Korea. Look at me!!

It's OK. Really. 42 more days. In planning our trip around Asia, I'm getting so overwhelmed with happiness that I just drift into that little world whenever I start getting stressed out. More, happier, updates soon.

Broken Lateral Malleolus :(

I had a shitty, shitty month of March. Ah well, my mom and her boyfriend came to visit me in Korea so that was awesome. But at the beginning of the month, I broke my friggin ankle. I tried to write about it but I was too friggin depressed to process the whole thing, so I spent my free time getting fat on my couch and killing brain cells with the entire series of "Private Practice." It is a pretty great way to kill brain cells if you ever think about looking into it.

Anyway I have five days left in the cast so now that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I can focus on the experience without getting super depressed. So here I go.

On the last night of February I had one too many LIITs (or perhaps a few more) and fell down the stairs getting out of the bar. Fiance had to carry me to the cab then up the stairs to our 3rd floor apartment. I'd sprained the ankle a few times before that so I didn't think it would be a huge deal. The next morning I woke up and still couldn't put any weight on it so we called our boss who showed up a half hour later to take me to the emergency room. Basically in Korea we don't know where anything is or how to get to it so we have to call the person responsible for bringing us into that situation, i.e. the man making money off of us. Well Mr. Kim brought us to the emergency room where my foot was (painfully) x-rayed and then I saw this:

(cue the screams)

I couldn't believe it. I saw the break immediately. Somewhere in the blur the ER doc said to Mr. Kim, I heard "수술 필요 할거예요." I have pretty basic Korean but I knew immediately that meant "will need surgery" and I then started crying inconsolably. Seth and I went home trying to digest the new reality that I had a broken bone in a foreign country and there was no way to call that magical doctor from Harry Potter who could make bones grow overnight to make it all go away. To make the weekend a little bit more pitiful, Mr. Kim said on the way out of the Emergency Room: "$12 for CRUTCHES? You don't need to pay that much. I can get you much cheaper ones. You're not going anywhere this weekend so we can just wait until Monday when I take you to the orthopedist." Maybe this was his Korean passive-aggressive way of punishing me for damaging his foreigner, although it was more likely his incredible Korean lack of logic in a situation where you really wish there was more logic involved. But it resulted in me scooting around the apartment on pillows all weekend. I reminded myself of one of those dogs who doesn't have hind legs and has to pull himself around with his body attached to wheels.

Anyway Monday arrived and Mr. Kim took me to the orthopedist (with very good English, I might add) who took another look at the x-ray and told me I wouldn't need surgery, but he would need to "manually reduce" the bone. Not so bad, right? Yeah he'll just move my bones back into place. Completely non-invasive, not to mention much cheaper than surgery since my insurance policy doesn't cover anything non-life-threatening. (Oh who knows what it covers; it's private and I was just informed the other day that I haven't actually been using it anyway. Thanks a lot Korea.) OK I thought -- See you later, when you do this vague procedure you're talking about at some point in the future that will solve my problem! "So I'll do it here, now." Oh... so you'll give me drugs, right? I ask. "No," said Dr. Moon. "In America, you would get a local anesthetic. But I don't want the anesthetic to get in between your bone fragments, as that might cause an infection." ... Does this mean I get some really cool Eastern medicine acupuncture so that my pain receptors don't work? :) "No," said Dr. Moon. "This is going to be... quite painful." WHAT. ... Can I at least take an Advil first? DAMNIT Korea no Advil. "It will be... very painful. But. You are young. So you can... overcome the pain.".

He was not joking.

I laid down on the xray bed with my boss next to me holding my hand (not awkward) and the doctor next to my foot. Then he did it. He pushed my bones back together with his thumbs. It's a miracle I did not yell obscenities at him. It really is -- I yelled "FUCK YOU!" to a volunteer at my first half marathon because I couldn't see the finish line around the corner and she was too fucking happy and I was too fucking exhausted from running for 2+ hours.

Anywho I took a total of *three* days off (I get *three* sick days per year in my contract, lucky me) and then it was back to teaching ten 40-minute classes per day!

So I've been going back to the doctor every Monday, getting really close to my boss since we now spend an hour more per week together than what we were previously used to, which was a cumulative sum of about 30 or 40 seconds. After week two I got upgraded from a fat white splint to a beautiful bright green cast which matches ALL my clothes perfectly. Not. However I still hadn't fattened up too much yet and it fit better into my jeggings than the splint, so the highlight of my week was changing out of the sweat pants. Yay. After week three, the doctor removed the top of the foot part on the cast, so I would be able to move my foot up and down and the tendons wouldn't get too tight, which was actually a really good idea in my opinion ("Not my idea," he said. "Textbook idea."). Then week four came and went, and I was allowed 30% weight bearing with one crutch, but not on stairs. Now I have finally completed week five, and I've got five days left of 50% weight bearing. In five days I get the cast off! Here's some photographic evidence of its beauty:

"But Patrice, aren't you going to have people sign it?? It's tradition." Shut up.

The bright sides of breaking my leg: 

• It's not ulcerative colitis! Which I had and it really sucked and I DID need surgery for that. A lot. Think bloody diarrhea and unbearable constant stomach pain with no end in sight.
• It's not ulcerative colitis PLUS a broken leg which would be really bad with the non-stop half-awake emergency runs to the bathroom in the middle of the night! Actually just in general; not only at night. OK enough IBD.
• It's spring! Not too hot, not too cold, so my toesies aren't getting chilly and the cast doesn't stink with sweat TOO badly.
• I get to ride in a wheelchair from home to work to work to home every day with my fiance pushing me. We look ridiculously adorable. I can only assume anyway.
• All my students carry things for me and I get to ride around my classroom in a wheely chair my coworker has lent to me.
• Crutches are a great weapon to threaten children with.
• The really small children (like 2-year-olds) at school think I'm some kind of white monster with four legs so sometimes when they look scared of me in the elevator I make angry dog faces at them and growl and then they start to cry! It's hilarious!

Well that's where I am now. Maybe after I get my cast off this will become my workout blog because I'm going to have to hit the gym and my diet HARD. I've been keeping it pretty paleo since October last year, but have had to loosen the restrictions since I can't go home for lunch when it's unhealthy.

In September Seth and I are going to NEPAL. And then Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. But before that we're going to Bali. And then after all of it we're getting MARRIED. Life is happening. Thanks, life.

Dear Country, please develop some confidence.

So after ranting about plastic surgery in Korea the other day, I went into my third grade class and told all the girls that they are beautiful no matter what. I told them they could get plastic surgery if they really really wanted to, but I don't think they need it. Hope it got through to one or two at least. They didn't seem to react, but maybe they didn't know how to react? Maybe they were like, "what does the crazy white lady want now?" And maybe I'm technically undermining the spirit of the culture to "improve yourself" wherever and however possible, but whatever.

I think I've made a connection here. The other day my Kindergartners did this English play:

(This song has been stuck in my head for about a month, thank God it's over)
They are almost ready to graduate next week and go into first grade in March... sniff! I've become so close with all of them and I'm definitely going to cry at graduation.

Anyway after the play during pictures, I ended up next to the most uncomfortable parent who had confronted me at the very beginning of the school year last April to ask me why his son didn't like speaking English at home. He had said he was curious about the "attitude" of my KINDERGARTEN class. I retreated behind Homeroom Teacher's back who I'm pretty sure rattled off something about how kids will be kids and he probably just wanted to play at home but he was doing fine in class. Later in the year the mom came in to monitor my class and make sure I wasn't being too hard on him, because he didn't like the constant studying he was doing at home (wonder what the problem there was). So when I saw this dad during pictures, against my better judgment and because of awkward tension I said to him, "Your son is really smart! He's done so well!" Which is mostly true. My luck of the draw this year landed me with a bunch of high achievers and the son in question has trouble keeping up with them sometimes but overall does just fine. The dad looked surprised, though. "Really?" he said. "Do you really think so? Because he doesn't think so." What? "He says to me, 'Daddy, I think I'm a fool!'" Geez, kid. But first of all, who believes their 6-year-old when the kid says he thinks he's a fool? What do 6-year-olds know? So once again I was taken aback by this dad's annoying bluntness and lack of understanding of Kindergartners -- who reinforces that belief? Don't you know that if you tell a kid they're smart they'll believe you and they won't have learned helplessness?? I brushed it off. "No, he's really smart! He is!" I said. "He's still in Kindergarten. He really shouldn't be so hard on himself." I probably could have added, "Sometimes he expects answers to fall on him from the sky so he doesn't want to put the work in to figure it out, but when he does the work he understands as well as his peers" but let's face it I'm just not so eloquent in the moment.

Are Korean parents are really so hard on their children? First the mom tells her 16-year-old (in my last post) about how she NEEDS plastic surgery on her eyes so that judges will think she's beautiful. Now a dad listens earnestly to his son's claims that he's not smart, when said son hasn't even gotten to grade school yet! Well, at least what I said seemed to make a difference, because I made sure to tell the boy yesterday in class that he was smart, and I never want him to think otherwise. He said, "yeah, I know, my dad say." Then he was more attentive than usual and helping other kids with the answers.

From what I understand, Korea developed really, really fast. Like 50 years ago this was mostly countryside with no cars and very little technology. It seems like maybe the struggle to keep up with the rest of the world is starting to get to everybody's head -- actually I'm pretty sure it already has.

In the wise words of Zoolander, "I guess I have a lot to ponder."

Yep. Ramblings.

I’ve been thinking about creating a blog because I like writing. I’ve done it in the past and it just never seemed to work out. I realized recently that this was because I always try to narrow it down to one theme, then I get bored with that theme. My thoughts are too ADD to stay on one topic. I’m a linguophile living in South Korea teaching Kindergarten through 3rd grade with 2 weeks off per year to do what I love most, traveling. I have a really cool mountain man-y fiancé who loves me for me and likes what I like. I used to be really sick with IBD and now after a shit ton of surgeries and medications I feel so much better and I have an ileostomy that behaves most of the time. Because I used to be so sick, I’m really interested in what I could have done (but didn’t) to improve my situation and maybe that’s why I hope I can study Nutrition sometime soon, but in the meantime I’m really focused on eating Paleo-friendly and only putting food in my body that nourishes it, and hitting the gym hard three times per week. I studied Psychology in college and that made me NOT want to go into the field, but I still really like to analyze people. Combined with my love of traveling and culture, that makes me a potential linguistic anthropologist? But alas that would probably land me in academia and I’m not so sure that’s where I want to end up. I’m a progressive but I try not to give my opinion on that unless it’s asked for, or if I feel like it’s really needed in a conversation (maybe that’s where I can get in trouble), and I have a weird word-vomit when I get around religion. Basically I’m not a fan. I don’t have anything against people who are, but I just really don’t like those people trying to spread it.

So that’s me in a nutshell.

I guess I’ll make this first thingy about what I’m doing in Korea. Like many white Native English speakers looking for a job in their home country, I found the Korean job market pretty appealing and jumped on the financial opportunity. Fiancé and I came for the cash, and we’ve stayed for the cash. We each save about $1000 per month (out of our $2000/month salary), which we frivolously spend on kickass vacations to Southeast Asia and don’t do a very good job of compensating for when we come back. Dr. Mom pointed out to me, “Patrice, that’s actually not very much money” but it was more than I’d seen before after getting a bachelor degree, and like I said we like to travel. (Also rent and insurance are paid for so life is much less complicated.) We absolutely could have gotten better jobs with public schools, i.e. more vacation time and way less contact teaching time -- like less than 30 hours, but this job has its upsides too. We work with 8 other foreigners and they’re all pretty cool dudes. And our kids are stinkin’ cute. I mean they are just adorable. Cue video evidence.

(p.s. this was 6 months ago so their English is much better now. Maybe I’ll try to take one last video of them before graduation to first grade next week)

We also just spend a lot of time having fun on the weekends. This is our first real 9-5, so on Fridays it feels like we just ran a marathon. The big difference between our style of teaching and real (certified) teachers is that we don’t actually plan anything. True, we have to write “monthly lesson plans” where we say what we might get done that month in every book at the Kindergarten (give or take several pages in either direction), but otherwise when we go into class it’s a free-for-all. I literally ask my students what page we left off on because I’ve just come from another class and have no time to go pee much less check where we were in the book. Planning periods? HA! Don’t make me laugh. We work at a private school, which means it’s run by profit motivation! How do you make more money? TEACH MORE KIDS. So we pretty much teach back-to-back 8-10 classes per day. Some of those are blocked out so it’s two classes at a time, and we get a lunch and a snack break. Like I said though, we have our perks. Like how tonight I got a bouquet of flowers from a parent, or sometimes our boss buys us pizza! We also got free jackets last year… and a field day where we won nuts! … There were cashews… and pecans… involved…

So we teach at a Kindergarten in the morning and a hagwon in the afternoon, which means kids come to MORE school when they finish school every day. Don’t worry, they get vacations… yeah, two weeks per year! During the two months they (and public school teachers) have off in the winter and extra few weeks in the summer, they still have to come hang out with the waygooks (foreigners, close to the Korean word for alien) and work on their English. Oh yeah, they go to Math, Music, Art, Science and History hagwons too! They must REALLY love school! (They don’t.)

I don’t have any video of my afternoon hagwon kids. Mostly because the place is not quite as joyful as the Kindergarten. It’s just a building with classrooms where the kids get hit on the palms with a stick (important: by the Korean teachers) if their test scores aren’t good enough.

YOU KNOW WHAT’S CRAZY? Korean women and eye surgery. NO. Correction: Korean girls and eye surgery. I know a Korean girl who is technically 16 (18 in Korea but that’s another whole story) and she got double eyelid surgery. Many girls get it even younger. Still others get it as a graduation from high school present. This particular girl I know with whom I occasionally hang out (begrudgingly — teenagers are weird!) goes to a high school for the arts where she is specializing in voice. During HER vacation this year, she spent most of her time practicing singing and several hours per day on the piano, because who wants free time? Anyway, from what I understand, last year her mom said, “Jaina, you must get eye surgery.” And Jaina said “No! Why?” and her mom said, “because when you audition for operas, they will not just judge you on your voice, but also on your face.” Jaina agreed that this was a great reason and thus the surgery was done and she’s very happy with the results. For better or worse, most people don’t recognize her the first time they see her afterward. Excuse my ethnocentrism, but sheesh. I’m not one to just throw out a “sheesh” but I feel like it’s pretty appropriate here.

I realize that in the East this is much more acceptable and probably even encouraged to improve your looks if it’s possible, but sixteen?? She’s a freshman in high school. Isn’t her face still changing? I’m pretty sure I looked way different when I was a freshman. Like maybe my nose was too big for my face. I mean I definitely grew into my face and figured out what features work for me.

The main thing about this country that tends to weird out me and Fiancé, and a lot of other waygooks (foreingers/aliens), is the fixation with appearance. You think you’ve seen appearance fixation? Come to Korea. They put the average selfie-obsessed teenager to shame. I’ve gotten pretty used to it now, but when we first arrived a year and a half ago I was appalled at how many people were constantly taking pictures of themselves. I remember stealing a look at one guy’s phone gallery and my worst fears were confirmed when I realized that pretty much all his pictures were the same shots of him with mostly the same background and facial expression, because why take one picture when you can take 50? Credit where credit is due though, Samsung makes really good smart phones with great cameras.

Well I could keep going and talk about how ginormous the phones here are but that would probably take me into phone-buying and awkward coffee dates with Koreans who speak about 15 words of English and then I might talk about coffee shops and how many Koreans have never spoken to a white person before and seem to get a little starstruck sometimes. Or maybe this is like overcompensation for racism? Oh man. So I’ll just cut myself off here.

Until next time! Hopefully.