February 29th, 2008

I’m typing this in Word right now, as the internet a) isn’t hooked up in my room, and b) probably wouldn’t work on my computer if it was, anyway.

 

Why would it not work?  Because for some reason or another, my computer has decided that anytime you mess with its network settings that you are inviting it to play a game.  A game called, “Let’s see how many times can I randomly restart on my own or politely ask Justin to restart me himself!”.  It’s a unique game that I’ve only seen in (or on my way to) Korea, but you may know it better as, “Name one thing that could make Justin forget that he spent $1300 on this son-of-a-B computer and smash it into a million pieces”.  Only playing that game on those beaches of Bureaucracy could make it better…

 

Wait!  But I CAN play it on those beaches!  Not the section of beach where you try to get a certified criminal record, but the one where you try to get an E-2 Visa to teach in Korea!  Allow me to summarize:

 

-       Korean Consulate’s office tells us that we cannot get a visa, and must fly back to the USA to get it

-       We leave, and Mr. Choi pulls some strings and gets it all cleared up back at the port

-       We go back to the consulate’s office, but OOPS.  No cigar.

-       An hour goes by and we finally reach an agreement and it is decided that while we cannot get the visas on THIS trip, we won’t have to go back to the USA.  THANK HEAVENS.  In the words of Mr. Choi, "I eh-feel like eh I go to some kind of hell, and now recover to a paradise."  You're telling me.....

Barring the whole not getting a visa thing, the trip to Hukuoku, Japan was really cool.  Japanese people are very nice, and go way out of their way to help you.  Nobody in our group knew a lick of Japanese, but still we managed to figure out the bus system, find banks, find good restaurants, communicate with 4 cab drivers, and find a historical Japanese shrine to visit – all with the help of a few nice citizens. 

 

I wish I could give you all of the details of the trip – parts were absolutely hilarious… but to write them down would take forever, and there weren’t any specific funny parts.  It was the trip as a whole (Mr. Choi not having enough cash to get around, the three of us being utterly clueless about Japan, Mr. Choi’s personality in general) that made it great.

 

But in the meantime you can check out pictures…. They are always more interesting than long blog entries anyway (: