Visa arrived! Departure tomorrow :S

THIS...

...is my VISA! 

It arrived last night and, thankfully, the powers that be decided I didn't have to trek down to Atlanta to get it. I shall explain:

So, when last I left off I was in the midst of a conniption fit and decided to vent my anxiety into something productive: this blog! I decided after writing to wait until Monday to call the Consulate and find out if they received that 5$ money order I sent off. Turns out that, nope!, they didn't.

Now, I began to panic a bit and, in a desperate bid to relieve my anxiety I threw more money at the problem in the form of ANOTHER money order, this time sent down overnight by UPS. When I called the next day I found out that, not only did my panic-driven UPS parcel arrive on time (as it should!), the original snail mail one arrived as well! The Consulate now had TWO money orders, which means that I wasted about 30$ in a panicked frenzy... which, in my mind, was still worth it.

Now, while this meant that my visa would be done by Wednesday morning, it still had to get to get up to us. The ExpressPost envelope we gave them, however, takes two days to get from Atlanta to Asheville, which means that the passports would arrive a full 5-6 hours after the departure of my flight! Thankfully, Hannah's father (a pilot for Delta Airlines, to those who don't know), has a residence in Atlanta and was finishing up a series of cross-national flights on Wednesday morning. So, he was able to arrive in Atlanta around 7:30AM, went to the Consulate and got our passports around 9AM, passed out for a few hours, and drove up to Asheville for around 7PM. Needless to say, we had a very tasty supper of mango-chicken sandwiches waiting for him upon his return. If it wasn't for that, Hannah would have had to fly down to Atlanta (since she has a free flight pass with Delta, being the daughter of a pilot in their fleet), get them herself, and fly back up on the same day... THEN depart the very next day for our 25+ hour trek to Busan. Needless to say, we're both very relieved that everything fell in to place!

So, in the meantime, we have a few minor errands to run, cold/strep throat infections to get over (I got sick on the weekend and, in the spirit of charity, gave my infection to Hannah), and pulled pork at 12 Bones to eat before attempting to sleep tonight.

I would normally say that I'm a ball of nerves right now, but I got myself so buggered up over the visa thing that I haven't really had the energy to worry about the actual trip! Plus, well, it still hasn't really sunk in yet that I'm actually doing this. That'll probably change in about a month!

So, for now, I bid you all annyeong-hi gyeseyo. Now begins our "radio silence" until either I discover internet on the plane ride over or I arrive in Korea and get internet access.

Cheers,

-Garrett