Korea Chaos

Annyong haseyo! Hello! Cindy here. Many of you close to us have been there to support us through the past few months of chaos. We thank you so much! For those of you unfamiliar with the story of our frustrating journey to Korea...I will sum up as briefly as possible:

-we had three jobs fall through before finally securing the fourth

-we had to get criminal record checks, and have them signed by a notary (costs money!). Brett had to find a way to get an Australian police check , and get it signed, and sent to Korea. Thanks to his dad, this was possible.

-Brett's university does not know about sealed transcripts. His dad had to visit the university a few times for him before finally attaining a copy of his transcript in an envelope that was stamped over the seal.

-We sent all our documents to Korea (including our degrees out of the frames on the wall).

-Brett's Australian police check was sent from Australia. Since Brett's documents arrived from two places, and they arrived 3 days apart from each other, immigration in Korea thought something may be fake and asked him to send a letter explaining why his Aus police check arrived later, and what he was doing in Canada

-we were then finally allowed to apply for our visas......where Brett was declined. Even though we had emails from the Toronto consulate and the Australian consulate stating that Brett would be able to get his visa at the consulate in Toronto, they still declined him based on the fact that he was not in his home country. AHHH! You see, part of the visa process in a one minute interview, and they wanted him to do the interview in Australia.

-the Australian consulate agreed to interview him over the phone but only if he was on Australian soil.

-we had to move out of our apartment because we were supposed to be in Korea already and a new tenant was moving in. Thanks Leanne, Shaun, and my parents for letting us stay with you!

-days of research by Brett led to him finding an agency in Korea that stated that if you get your university education verified by them, you can apply for your visa anywhere in the world. The consulates in Toronto and Australia confirm that this is true.

-Korean immigration says the agency in Korea is only for university teachers and not for Brett.

-This was when we started thinking we may not go. We had so many signs that this adventure was not for us. We thought that maybe all these road blocks were for a reason...and the reason might be we should not go!

-Korean immigration then changed their minds and told Brett he could get his education verified by this agency and get his visa from anywhere.

And then we were off!.....but not before being told that we would not have our own apartment in Korea, that we would have to stay in a temporary apartment because they did not find one for us...yet.

Phew! If you made it this far in this long blog, you deserve a drink! Sorry about the long ramble....but seriously that is the short version of the story!