Repatriate Me!

One of the things that i am not going to miss in Korea are the periodic air raid drills. Their generally supposed to happen on the 15th of the month at 2pm. When they go off everyone is supposed to stop driving, get off the sidewalks and enter buildings to stay there until the end of the drill. In my time in Korea I’ve never seen this happen, though apparently in the late 90s when I arrived traffic did stop though I never saw that.

Now I know everyone ignores it. I’ve been home several times when the sirens go off and always look out the window (I’ve got a good view from the 11th floor) and traffic never stops. When you know it’s a drill it’s really easy to ignore it. However recently there’s been a few times when the air raid sirens go off unexpectedly such as just now at 10am on the 6th of the month. Looked outside and it’s still business as usual.

Three weeks from today I get in plane and leave my home of the last 14+ years, moving back to Canada. Actually moving to a city where I don’t know anyone and have only spent 12 hours in – last summer had one day to kill while waiting for my return flight to Seoul.

Things are really ramping up here. I’ve only got a few more classes to teach and then I’m finished up a 14 year career as an ESL instructor. Once I’m in Toronto, I’ll be a full-time web developer looking for work for my business Caffeine Creations – site is still under development but should be finished this weekend. I’ll be looking to draw in my own clients as well as do outsource work for other web agencies and developers. I’ve also purchased a ticket for a web developer conference in NYC in October and am looking forward to learning a lot as well as meeting other developers – especially all the ones I’ve been interacting with on twitter and skype for the past couple of years.

We’ve sold almost everything we can sell and will be giving away or throwing away lots of other things as well. The moving company is booked for June 15th and will be packing up all our stuff that we’re shipping. At that point our house will be relatively empty. I leave for Canada on June 23rd to find housing, buy a few things for the house (will buy majority once the wife is around to help choose), and a car. During that three weeks i also need to register my business with the government, get a cell phone, add cell number to business card and get those printed.

The wife and kids will be arriving on July 14th. There is some stress with this as we still haven’t got her visa. The Canadian government is not particularly helpful here as we are not allowed to contact them in person, on the phone, by email, by letter or for any reason about the visa application. The only exception being for a change of address which can only be submitted by fax or post (not email). Oh and if you do submit a change of address the government will not acknowledge receipt of that change so you will never know if they are sending letters to the wrong address. Lovely.

Since I’m leaving before we get the deposit back on our house (this is a very large deposit, completely unlike what happens in Canada), I am unable to send the bulk of our savings back to Canada in my name. This means that my wife has to do it, but she can not send that much money until she has her immigration visa (these are Korean regulations) so this visa situation is getting quite stressful.

Also trying to pack in as many meetings with friends before I go as is possible. Lots of good food and good times being had.