I have my visa... Almost.

An hour and a half ago, I received this in an email:

I threw on a jacket, yanked on my gloves and sprinted to reception (uphill in snow, both ways). I had to ask for directions, but after dodging heavy machinery twice and braving arctic conditions, I made it to the office. A sign said reception was downstairs, so down the stairs I went.

Only to discover that there was not a soul to be found in the office.

Apparently office hours are from 10:55am to 11:am and 4:30pm to 4:31pm. I suppose the French need more free time for bread-eating, surrender and nakedity.

I thought, "Well, maybe they left it lying around anyway," so I looked behind the desk and in all the cupboards and drawers, as well as in the wall-safe and behind some hideous paintings. Nothing.

It has to be here somewhere.

Girard must have taken it with him when he went to the bakery.

So I went home and facebooked mourned my rotten luck, while simultaneously doing Gangnam Style around this tiny little apartment because my visa is less than 20m away from me at this very moment.

I was going to take photos of the adventure of fetching my visa, but my camera's battery is dead. Enjoy the Dylan Moran video instead. 

My well-traveled visa

This passport (with my visa in it) has been to more countries in the last 24 hours than I have in the past month.

And it may be delivered... sooon...

I see England, I see France. I can see your underpants. 

If "Out for Delivery" means it's in a truck that's heading up our snowy little mountain, then,

Applying for the visa

My contract arrived this morning, during my mom's birthday lunch. As soon as we got home, I downloaded and filled in every remaining form that I need to fill out, including the SARS stuff for the tax exempt status.

Now it just needs to be sent off. Hooray!

My recruiter provides a very helpful guide for filling in the visa form, although the section numbers don't quite correspond because they just released a new visa form. A skype call later, though, every tangle was sorted.

The Great Contract Debacle of 2013

My contract was apparently sent to me on Friday, and after being 'put in a bag' in Cape Town on Friday, the tracker has turned up no new info.

So I called the post office. I was put on hold briefly and passed along to another post-fairy, who gave me another number to call. That person gave me another number to call as well. The third number I called has apparently gone out to brunch or the beach and might be back later. Maybe.

I'm leaving the country in 2 days' time.

I think this might be the start of another debacle.

Once it does arrive, I'll have to sign it, throw in some other documents like my passport and a passport photo, courier it to Pretoria, wait for it to come back with a visa in it which will then be couriered to me at a small ski resort at the top of a mountain in France.

My nerves are completely shot.

Current count of people I have spoken to on the phone: 8

Finally spoke to a human being with some initiative who stood up and asked the guy who wasn't answering his bloody phone (21 attempts). My parcel is currently being processed by customs and should be delivered tomorrow morning. 

My contract is in the mail!

Come on, come on...

You've got 9 days left to get to me, before I go overseas and things get unnecessarily complicated.

Edit: Spoke to my recruiter last night and he is couriering it to me today, which means it should be here either tomorrow or on Monday. YAY!

Time to:
 - Download and fill out the residency form for SARS
 - Check that I have everything I need for the visa application
 - Complete the pre-orientation course. I'm find it repeats a lot that I did in Linguistics 1&2, PGCE and TEFL, so it's a bit of a pain, but I'll be done with the boring bits soon and can move on to the Korean culture, history and language bits, which I'm more interested in.
 - test-pack my luggage
 - Work on my basic Korean skills, which I've been slacking on a bit
 - Buy gifts for staff and students at the school

I'm also doing pretty well on my diet and exercise plan - only 2kg to go before I'm the weight I said I was on my application. Being over it is not an uncommon problem, but I've heard of people being sent home because they lied about their weight. I didn't have a scale, so I guessed, and was off by about 5kg. I am quite keen to get in shape, so this seemed like a good goal to start with. If you're interested in stalking my health kick, I'm sweatywaygook on Fitocracy. And that's all I'm going to say about that, in this blog. I might talk about keeping fit in Korea when I get there, but less about me, more about the facilities or things I try.