Monday 19 May 2014

Welcome! | いらっしゃいませ!| 어서오세요!


Hello!

Right, I'll try and keep this brief, considering most of you know me in real life (and thus should have a fair idea of what's going on with me at the moment), or have found me through a search (and thus should have the ability to read my little sidebar bio), haha.


Anyway, after what is fast becoming half a year of training, application, and stress, I am on my way to Incheon in South Korea, to teach English with my lovely boyfriend Nick (whose blog you can find here).


I've written a summary of how I came to have this job, but in the interest of shortness I've added a jump below (opens in a new tab). If you want to bail now, here's your chance! I won't judge you.






I applied for the EPIK (English Programme in Korea) programme via KorVia Consulting, and was informed that I was successfully accepted by IMOE (Incheon Metropolitan Office of Education) a few weeks ago.

This was startling news, as we were still waiting for the dates of our EPIK interviews! Apparently IMOE liked our application videos and personal essays so much they decided to forgo the interview stage and go straight on to offering us jobs!


As humbled and incredibly grateful we were to have been given such a great opportunity, this caused us a lot of stress (through our own mishaps, not Korvia, EPIK or IMOE, I will add) as we were expecting to have another month or so left in which to get our documents sorted out before submission. Instead, we had a matter of weeks.


One thing led to another, and due to time running short, we ended up having to go to JAPAN to get our E2 visas. This is due to the fact that the Korean Embassy in Fukuoka can issue a visa in 3 days, whereas in the UK it takes at least 5 working days. So if you apply on a Monday, you won't get them back until the following Monday.


I'll write about it all in more detail in later posts, where hopefully I can help out other people in the same or similar situations. One of the most stressful things about this process is that there is very little information on what to do when things go wrong, especially for those coming from the UK! I'm not sure why, but most of the information is from or for US citizens, where the processes can be very different and to some degree untranslatable.


Anyway, that's it for now! Hope to hear from you soon!






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