Of course, there are frustrations.

Just to be clear, moving to another country isn’t all easy or fun.  Today, teaching went well.  After lunch the plan was to leave school early to go sign up for a bank account, internet, and get a cell phone.  Cell phones are tricky here.  Foreigners do not get the same plan as Koreans because many foreigners come and go within the year that many times, cell phone companies were not getting full payment for the cell phones (here you pay for your phone either up front or in installments distributed across the full 2 years of your contract – its not free or even cheaper).  Well Patrick emailed to tell me the new iphone is coming out next week.  If I am getting a smartphone I’m getting an iphone and then I can use it even after I leave Korea.  But with the new phone coming out I want to wait and then I want to see if I can buy it outright and not have the 2 year commitment.  So much to thank about.

The trip to get things done started off well.  My school wanted me to have a Busan bank account so that they can set up a withdrawal for school lunches.  I didn't care what bank as long as I could send money home.  But that didn't work out so well.  They were trying to get me to set limits for how much could be taken out at one time and in one day from the ATM but not having been paid here of knowing how much money I might want to take out of an ATM at one time I had no clue.  At the same time they were trying to answer my question of how much the fee is to transfer money home.  The fee is dependent on how much I transfer but they couldn't communicate the range to me.  I just want to know how much it would cost for 1 million won (roughly 1,000 US dollars and easy for me to gage).  But they took almost 10 minutes to get to that.  Then they were getting frustrated because I was taking so long.  Oh I forgot to mention that every time I had to write my name and then sign it, I had to write my name in Korean!!!  I have never written anything in Korean before so copying what my co-teacher wrote down for me was hard and took me a long time.

Well we got the bank account set up, the check card issued, and worked out the concerns with the maximum withdrawals and then I asked about setting up my account to transfer money.  I had to move to another person and basically they told me I would have to come into the bank each month and fill out a form to transfer the money.  I lost it.  The stress of not understanding, not being able to communicate, and realizing that I would not be able to do what I needed to get done was just to much and I started to cry.  I hate that it happened but its reality.  Moving overseas is hard.  But I said something about KEB having the ability to online transfer to an overseas bank and my co-teacher looked up KEB on her phone and we quickly took off for KEB.  We had 10 minutes until they closed and were in the bank for about 1 minute before they locked the doors.  Whew!  I'm so thankful for my co-teacher but I think she was worried because I was crying.  I was just frustrated and couldn't handle the stress well.  But KEB was so great that I set it all up myself and she didn't need to translate for me.  She has to call for me tomorrow to get my ATM card issued because they couldn't do it since the bank was closed.  

So I now have 3 bank accounts in Busan and I came home, fixed dinner, watched part of the Patriot and came to the coffee shop for internet.  It might have been a frustrating hour but its not a bad day.

Oh and other main frustration is not having internet at my apartment.  I have been without a cell phone since August 18th and don't mind it so much.  Not having internet at my house I've been without for exactly 2 weeks (I had internet in my dorm at orientation) and I'm going crazy without it!  I'm so ready to have internet at my house!  Hopefully it wont' be too much longer!