Aimee’s World Tour

MUST BE FINISHED… PLEASE COME BACK! 

What’s the DMZ?  C’mon now people.  The Demilitarized Zone.   The area that divides North and South Korea.  THE BORDER. 

To be fair I didn’t even know WHERE Korea was when I applied to work out here.  I’d memorized it ALL for history class in 7th grade so I don’t see how any of it could have escaped me.  😉

We went to the DMZ back in November but a lot of the “blog details” are lost since it’s, uh, February.  Luckily I have pictures…

In this instance WE constitues most of the foreign staff at my school: Justine, Laura, Ana, Diane, Heidi, Hayley and moi.  Yup – all girls. 

From what I can remember we got up early and took cabs to the USO office somewhere in Seoul.  I jumped in with Justine and Laura.   

The ride was a bit tense.   We had to arrive by a certain hour and our taxi driver seemed to be taking his d*mn time with the meter running.  The words “Bally joo-say-yo” were at the tip of my tongue for more than half of the trip!  (Hurry please!) I let Justine and Laura speak since I had no clue where we were trying to go.  I’m useless like that. 

Upon exiting the cab, frustrated Laura kicked (a tree?).  It’s kind of humerous looking back.  Hehe – we reenacted it several times that day.  🙂

As we walked into the USO building there was an overload of foreigners standing in line.  Obviously we weren’t late.  Diane had organized the trip and her cab actually got there even later than ours did.

Once we’d shown our passports we were directed to the tour bus outside waiting for us.  I sat next to  Justine for the _?__ hour long trip up to the border.  We had a delightful little Korean man as a tour guide.  He knew his facts only I couldn’t understand the half of his English.  Still he was certainly amusing.  At one point I felt compelled to take some footage.

My mind is chock full of ideas and overflowing with ways to make them happen.  The hardest part of it is that most of the details have no guarantees, waving freely around in the winds of uncertaintly.  That’s life for you.

One of the biggest hurdles I face is obtaining my ticket home.  As part of my contract and the school’s legal obligation I am to receive a paid flight home.

While I know the school will provide me with my ticket, I am hesitant to accept the amount in cash as I know they will find a way to widdle down the cost until I am left with footing the bill for travel agent fees, taxes and that sort of fluff.  That and they’d probably garner me an amount that would leave me with ridiculous layovers.  I know I’m thinking the worst but with the direction our school is headed it is something to seriously consider.

Aside from my time in Tibet, my travel dates are not set in stone and thus my need for the cash.  Justine will eventually be flying back to South Africa and was offered 700,000 Won for her trip which is a joke.  Looking up the ticket online I found the cheapest at over $1000 ONE WAY which is at least 1.2 million Won.

I received a quote for a flight home from a travel agent here in Korea for 1.2 million Won.  I also checked online and again the cheapest flight was over $1000.  I am going to talk to Mr. Kim (our director if you dare to call him that) this week about my flight.  I’ve asked Miss Justine to go with me since we’re in the same boat… er plane.    😉  Talking to Mr. Kim about reasonable things is not one of my strong points.   After all you can’t reason with an idiot or you’re the idiot.

What’s that?  I got a flight home for 900,000 -something Won round-trip for Christmas?  Yes, yes I did.  And it was not something I’d ever want to do again.  Thirty hours each way for a total of 60 hours round trip is, to say the least, absolutely brutal!  Plus I flew into JFK which is just a no-no with my family.

The school had originally flown me out from the Scottsdale airport in AZ via Singapore Airlines.  I had but one stopover in San Fran (where I randomly met Barry Bonds on a bench) that lasted only a few hours.  I expect the same for my return flight only it will be to Newark, NJ (and no Mr. Bonds).  We are able to choose our final destination.  Oh that does sound ominous doesn’t it movie buffs? *Mom and Dad – there’s a movie called Final Destination that involves a plane crash.*

My travel plans continue to grow and while there are many things to consider –  keeping costs to a minimum and plotting routes and dates – I will rest easy once I have my ticket money in hand.

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Feb. 8, 2010

UPDATE.

Spoke to Mr. Kim today.  He found a cheap flight… FIFTEEN HOUR LAYOVER.  It’s like you really don’t give a sh*t about the teachers do you?

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Feb. 12, 2010

Two days ago I tired to speak to Mr. Kim about my flight since John had come over the day before and helped me find a discounted flight for 1.0 million Won including taxes.  Mr. Kim completely refused to speak to me on the matter and said I had to talk to Ellie.  Well that wasn’t going to get me anywhere.  I need some respect as a teacher.  So… I pulled out the big guns and talked to Mr. Lee, the owner of the school.  I even found the nerve to interupt a meeting he was having with one of the Korean teachers and so she helped translate for me.

Today I went out of my way to track down Mr. Kim who always seems to be hiding.  I found out that Mr. Lee had agreed to my request of 1 million Won though I have to take a 3% cut of the total sum for some kind of tax.  Not sure if that’s legit or not but it’s 37,000 Won and I really don’t care enough to investigate.  Finally things are coming together.  ASSSSAAAH!!

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