Feeding My Passion

So I flew out of San Francisco for Incheon, South Korea on 27 June. This was earlier than I expected to leave, I had expected to leave sometime right after my parents and I got back from taking a trip up to Waldron, Wash., in the San Juan Islands to see Madeline, her husband Don, and their daughter Amirah. We were also going to see a few of my parent’s friends from college and former colleagues, and go camping along the Oregon coast in the very cool yurts they have in the state parks. It’s so cushy that it’s hard to call it camping, but it is fun and easy. All you need to bring is bedding since they have at least a futon and a heater. Margaret (my ex-wife) and I had stayed in one for a couple of days up at Cape Disappointment, Wash., (what a name, huh?) when we lived in Hillsboro, Ore., back in 2000.

Besides not spending more time with Kamila, leaving before the trip up to Waldron was the other major bummer about leaving early. But my great recuiter, Issa Cohen, from Korea Recruitng, told me about a position in Dongtan New City (literally a new city, more on that later), and I figured if I could leave right away, why not? Why prolong the inevitable, especially when it would be more and more difficult to leave Kamila in the US.

As of June 18^th, I still needed to get my criminal background check and my degree certification apostilled and sent to S. Korea so my future employers could start to process my work visa. So I jumped in my little car and spent the day in Sacramento (where it’s always a pleasure to see my sisters who live there) getting a jurat for my certificate of degree (ugh, more on that damn certificate later), and getting both documents apostilled, and then sending all my paperwork – medical statement, criminal background check, certificate of degree, official college transcripts, 2 passport photos, photocopy of the info page on my passport (which came out too dark for S. Korean immigration, so I took a photo of my the info page and then emailed it to my recruiter who forwarded it onto the school who then sent it to immigration). Then I sent all of that paperwork via DHL (FedEx would have been fine as well) to the school here in Dongtan.

I gave Issa a call once I got it in the mail and he asked whether I could leave on Wednesday. Oh, by the way, I did all my paperwork stuff on Monday. So I politely begged off Wednesday since my mother is busy on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and asked to leave on Friday. No problem. Except he booked a flight that was already overbooked. The next available flight on Asiana Airlines (which won airline of the year last year, and they deserve it) was Sunday, so I packed very carefully (which I didn’t need to do, since I thought I had a weight limit of 22kg for my checked bag and 10kg for my carry on, but I had a limit of 2 checked bags at 22kg each, so I could have brought my Manduka mat. I has a sad.) My parents took me to the airport, I got there in plenty of time, and I left at 1:45p, non-stop for Incheon, S. Korea.

Twelve hours and fourteen minutes later, I touched down 16 time zones away, in the land of the morning calm.