How is next week December already? This year has literally been simultaneously the slowest and quickest year ever. It feels like the pandemic started a lifetime ago and then it also feels like it started last week, so I’m not really sure what’s going on 🤷🏾. But on the Korea preparation front, things are in fact moving along! A few days after writing my previous post, my recruiter got back to me with the school’s address so I could send over my documents to start the visa process. After triple checking that I had all of my documents, I headed over to FedEx to ship my documents to South Korea. And let’s be honest, I checked to make sure I had all of my documents one last time while I was standing at the FedEx counter before handing them over to be shipped. And FedEx shipped my documents there a lot quicker than I anticipated. I dropped them off early Tuesday afternoon here in Los Angeles and they arrived in Seoul Thursday afternoon local time (which was Wednesday night in Los Angeles). FedEx told me that it would arrive to customs on Thursday but I didn’t realize the school would have them in hand on Thursday. So now the school will submit my documents to the immigration office, where in 1-2 weeks I will receive my E2 number. Once I receive that, I can apply for the E2 Visa at the Korean consulate here in Los Angeles before I head back to my hometown in Kansas to visit my parents for Christmas.
My initial documents I had to get together to start the visa process were:
• Apostilled FBI background check: from what I understand, ordering your background check and apostille usually takes at the most a couple of weeks. But because of COVID, it took me 10 weeks to do all of this. I got my background check through an official FBI channeler ( National Background Check, Inc.) which took a couple of days to get it completed although I had the option to expedite it in 24 hours. After receiving it back, I got it apostilled by sending it to Apostille Courier Express who then sent it to the US State Department for the apostille. I was initially quoted 6 weeks to get the apostille back but it ended up taking 9 weeks.
• Notarized and apostilled college diploma photocopy: I brought a photo copy of my diploma to the notary who notarized it, and then I walked over to the Secretary of State to get the apostille (perks of living in Los Angeles!). This was by far the quickest part of the process. The whole thing took about 30-45 minutes to complete.
• Scanned copy of passport info sheet
• Five 3.5×4.5cm passport photos: I sent four signed photos over to South Korea and am holding on to the fifth photo for when I apply for the visa. **Different recruiters may require a different amount of passport photos to be sent.
• Signed and initialed contract
• Signed resume with correct information
• One sealed university transcript
• Filled-out visa application form
• E-2 Health assessment form
Today, I received my Timekettle M2 Translator Earbuds! I found out about these searching on Amazon and Google, looking for some translating options for when I go to South Korea. Although I am learning to speak Korean, I by no means trust myself to get around without some help. What I like about this product is that there’s an option to translate Korean into English in an offline mode (I haven’t figured out how to do that yet). But these earbuds translate 93 different languages (but only 7 languages offline). I still haven’t quite figured out how to fully use them, but I did test them by playing a few lines from the Korean drama Start-Up on speaker mode and it translated them into English in my earbuds and the words showed up in the app on my phone. Y’all just wait and see–once I really know what I’m doing with these, y’all won’t be able to tell me NOTHIN’.
I hope you all (who celebrated it) had a great Thanksgiving this past Thursday! Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday: it’s an opportunity to celebrate gratitude, be with family, and eat an obscene amount of food, unashamed.
And it also allows me to seize opportunities to be weird 🙂
See y’all next time!
🎶 🎧 🎶 now listening to: Jeebanoff—Soft
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