visit South Korea

I am currently planning a trip (probably in about 18 months from now, May 2009). I practice a Korean martial art, and the school that I am a part of is planning a group trip there. Being that I am one of the higher ranking students in our school, I’ve been tasked with doing the initial planning for this trip. We’re going to try to go for about ten days. Should be a very awesome trip. I’ve always wanted to see a lot of the historical/cultural sites that we learn about through various ways of learning/practicing our martial art.

I think I’m going to need to contact a travel agent for this one. I went to the normal sites, Orbitz, Priceline, Cheaptickets, etc. for a price on tickets and the price per person was about $1200 just to fly there. We’re taking about a dozen people… and the price per person for 12 people was the same as it was if only one person was going… so I think we should be able to do better than that. I also need to do more research on what accommodations will cost and what we need to allot for transportation within the country and how much to factor in for admission prices (if any) to the places we wish to visit… as well as food prices. Sheesh… this is going to be a lot of planning… but I think it will be worth it in the end. We’re taking Grandmaster Choi, the head of the association we belong to (our school is just one of about a dozen schools in our association). Being that he is Korean, he should be able to help with a lot of the information (such as general costs), but he may not be up on flight costs and accommodations.

The other facet of planning this trip is raising money. I’m assuming we’re going to need somewhere between $2000-$3000 a person (almost half of the people going will be spouses of the students going… so we won’t need 12 hotel rooms… so that might help on cost, too… I just don’t have any idea what to expect on price at this point, to be honest). That’s a lot of money for many of the people who will be going. So we’re going to have some fund raising events to help lessen the load (hopefully by as much as half per person). I have several ideas to help with this. Being in a rural area, we have a lot of county fairs. We’re thinking of setting up a booth and selling Korean (more or less) food at the fairs and some of the other area events. We’re also thinking of doing some demonstrations and a few other things to raise interest and maybe get some donations. We may even want to set up a small non-profit to help pay for the trip (if the cost of doing so won’t offset the tax advantages we’d have for saving for the trip). There’s probably as much or more that I need to do in planning to pay for this trip as there will be in planning the trip itself…

Hopefully this will be doable and we can work it out. I think it would be an amazing experience.

South Korea is an amazing country. I’d love to visit there, maybe next summer. I was originally born there, and have half my family still living there, so it’s one of my most important goals in life. Just to experience that half of my culture. Not right now, but someday. I guess I’ll post more when I finally plan it.

My girlfriend is Korean and she’s visiting Korea this Christmas…I’m so jealous. I originally planned to join her, but I can’t afford it right now. By next Christmas, I hope I can achieve this goal. I sooo want to see Korea. Fortunately, I was at least able to meet her parents since they came here, but I haven’t seen her sister yet, just talked to her on the phone.

Her old university, Yonsei, looks so beautiful from the pictures I’ve seen. The mountains of Korea do too. Her grandmother is a monk in a temple up in the mountains, so that would be a good excuse to explore the mountains.

I just noticed that this goal was still on my list. I should probably mark it complete since I’ve been living here for almost three months now! I live in Suwon, but I’ve also visited Seoul (almost every weekend), Bundang (twice), and Yongin (once or twice). I really need to do some traveling and see more of the country, though!

I truly love it here.

I was supposed to be leaving in a few hours, but there was another small delay. Now I am leaving on Monday morning. They finally purchased my plane tickets!

I never imagined that obtaining my E-2 visa and plane tickets would be this difficult! It took me almost three months. I really hope it will be worth it.

I had one more delay but will finally be leaving early Sunday morning. I just received my E-2 visa today! It looks awesome.

Here I come! :D

It is so difficult to get a work visa for Korea. It’s been almost two months since I started the process and I still don’t have the visa number yet. Ugh. I’m really excited to move there and teach. Just wish they would hurry up. :-/

Spent one week in Yongsan-gu Seoul and I can’t wait to go back!

Hopefully I’ll be heading there in August between leaving Japan and going home.

My boyfriend made a friend studying abroad who’s from South Korea so we plan to meet up with him. :)