Immigration

So all I've heard about immigration are horror stories of long lines and all-day waits.  It's not that the actual application process takes a long time.  There are just so many people there every single day, and this is a really busy time of year because all the new NETs (Native English Teachers) are arriving.  Myself included.

The office didn't open until 9, but we were told to get there by 7:30.  Ingrid and I left the motel a little before 6am and made it to the building by 6:45.  The man working the desk had us sit next to the only other person in the lobby and pointed at each of us in turn. "1, 2, 3." So we were numbers 2 and 3 in line and had just over 2 hours of waiting in front of us. Awesome.

We didn't see anybody else until 7:30, and around 7:45 things got nuts. Some people were getting pissed at the length of the line.  Honey, if you show up to immigration at 8:30, there are bound to be people there a lot earlier and you're going to have to wait. Our wait time was based on the clock, yours is based on the number of people.  Deal with it.

Ahem. Anyway.  Submitting the paperwork took about 10 minutes, and we were told to come back in 2 weeks for our ARCs (Alien Registration Cards).  Once we have those, we can get phone plans and bank accounts and we don't have to carry our passports everywhere.  I'm a little impatient.

We didn't have to get to school until 10:30 and we were right by Cheonggyecheon, so we walked along it and took a few pictures.

This is actually one of my favorite places in Seoul because it's just so beautiful, day and night.  Here's a picture from last year that I took when some friends and I stumbled upon it after dark:

We also took some pictures by the fountains up top, which is a really nice place to sit and drink coffee or tea.

And yes, we did make it back to work on time.