Goodbye Blackberry, Hello Non-CDL

Today is the day I gave up my Blackberry. I don't leave the states for another week, but sadly had to say goodbye to my precious crackberry today. But thankfully my blackberry will be left in good hands with my best friend using it and "saving my number" for me. I'm hoping that my iPod Touch will be my new "crackberry" while I'm in Korea, because as fas as I have been able to research, people on E-2 Visa's can't get smart phones in Korea. I guess we'll see.

Also my first non-CDL drivers license in 3 yrs arrived in the mail today. It was super sad to give up my CDL -best college job ever driving city transit buses - but this way I won't come back from Korea with an expired drivers license. You see, in Virginia, a CDL must be renewed in person at the Department of Motor Vehicles, while a regular drivers license can be renewed online. If I were to keep my commercial drivers license, and thus let my license expire while I'm in Korea, I would come back to the states and have to retake ALL of the drivers test, the written and even parallel parking...and yeah, I would rather avoid that.

Also step 1 in my plan to send money home from korea is complete. I have no idea if this will actually work, but I did read about it on one blog somewhere on the interwebs. But anyways, I added my best friend to my bank of america account here at home and got him a debit card - which arrived in the mail today - step 1. Once I'm in Korea, I plan on opening a bank account at a major bank that offers an international debit card. Once I have that international debit card (which will be connected to my bank account where my Korean Won paychecks are deposited), I will mail the international debit card to my best friend back home. And then the money transfer via ATM will commence. You see, he will withdraw money using the (say for example) Woori Bank debit card at a Bank of America ATM. And then because Bank of America ATMs are soo cool and also accept Cash Deposits, he'll use the debit card that was issued to him connected to my BofA account and deposit the cash right into my US bank account. So I'm hoping that instead of having to pay in excess of $20 dollars on each side of a wire transfer ($20 to send the money and $20 to receive the money), I will instead pay 1% plus a $3 ATM fee. So if I sent $1000 home, I would pay $10 plus $3, or $13 instead of $40+! ---We will see if this plan works once I arrive in Korea.

Alright, time for bed, I can only breathe out of one side of my nose -- stupid sinus infection.
-Carly

8 or 9ish Days Until Korea

I guess it's only fair to start my blog about Korea -- pre-Korea. So here I go.

From the moment I decided I wanted to teach English in Korea to actually going has been a 3.5 month process. Most of which was waiting for my Virginia criminal background check to come back -- one of the requirements for an E-2 visa in Korea.

But now that I have my visa, a flight to Korea and a school to teach for, everything just kind of seems surreal.

In preparation for Korea, I've done my best to change all of my addresses, since I'm keeping my US cell phone number, I set up a google voice number so that my friends can text me and even call and leave a voicemail, I got rid of my commercial driver's license --just in case I stay in Korea for more than a year, it would really suck to come home to Virginia with an expired license (CDLs must be renewed in person in Virginia, whereas regular driver's licenses can be renewed online), figured out a place to store all of my furniture, and even added a friend to my bank account to help me "manage" funds while I'm gone.

For now I still need to:

Sort through all of my clothes --pile them: Korea, Stay and Trash

Box all of my stuff -- figure out what I can *stand* to be thrown in the trash

Move all of my furniture -- my grandparents were kind enough to let me store things in their basement

Clean my apartment -- this one is not as important as my roommate found someone to take over my lease

Buy some cotton twin sized sheets -- none of this polyester crap for me!

So in other words, I pretty much need to do everything but forward my mail.

And finally, feel free to comment, I will do my best to answer questions about deciding to go to Korea, the E-2 Visa process, choosing a school, contracts, recruiters, etc. you name it.

~Carly