This segment was shown last week on NBC Nightly News, but it’s worth a watch for those that haven’t seen it.  It’s about Portland, Oregon, which is widely regarded as the most bike friendly city in America.  6% of workers commute by bike, on over 170 miles of bike lanes.

Actually, Ras’ cousin Jake is in the bike business himself.  He and his partner own Daedalus Custom Bamboo Bikes.  There is an article about them HERE.

Building a bicycle infrastructure

A friend and former colleague who is now working at a university in Daejeon, went to an immigration meeting today and has this to report about new E-2 visa regulations:

Q: For people RENEWING their visas, what do they need?
A: Same as before, plus criminal check and medical check (and letter of release if necessary)

Q: What kind of criminal check? National, provincial, or local?
A: I don’t know. Right now there is no set specified regulation, so anything is acceptable for now.

Q: Many countries’ criminal checks require 4-5 months to receive back. What happens to our renewal in February?
A: We will accept your visa on a provisional basis and you can submit the check when you get it.

Q: How often do we have to submit this criminal check? EVERY time we apply for a new visa?
A: No. Once you submit it once, that’s all you do. After that we check your Korean record. We are Immigration, so it is our responsibility to keep track of your criminal record of Korea. That’s our job, but we have no access to your home country, so you just have to give it to us once.

Q: Do we have to leave Korea to renew our visas?
A: No. Even if you are getting a new visa with a new school, we will not require you to leave Korea IF (a) you have the criminal/medicals checks and (b) you have completed at least 80% of your contract. If you have 80% minimum completed, then we will just transfer your visa to your new school, and you don’t have to leave Korea (ie. no visa run)

* I specifically asked why these points had changed, and she said because the regulations are so tough now, they are afraid that it will be very difficult for the necessary teachers to stay here. They don’t want to have a teacher crisis, so they are making it more flexible for teachers already here.

Q: Do we still need to submit sealed transcripts?
A: You only need to submit them once. After that, you don’t need to submit them again.

Q: What kinds of documents must be notarized/apostilled?
A: I don’t know the regulation. Email me and I will get you that answer.

Q: For the medical check, can we have it done in Korea, or do we have to go back home to get it done?
A: You can have it done in Korea. You don’t have to go back home. As long as you go to a government-run hospital for the check, you will be okay.

Q: What must we have checked by the doctor?
A: drugs and HIV.

I will email her and get more info on the apostille and the medical.

You can see the rest of the post HERE.

Due to the recent case of the pedophile that worked in Korea, who then fled to Thailand, new regulations loom for current English teachers in Korea.  If the Ministry of Justice follows through, in addition to criminal and medical checks, we’ll need to fly back to our home countries to renew our visas!  Yes, you read that correctly.  It’s going to suck BIG TIME for us.

According to a Ministry of Justice press release, foreigners who apply for teaching visas will have to submit a criminal background check and a medical check, and must undergo an interview at the closest Korean consulate to their home town. Visa runs to Japan will also be scrapped. Teachers must now receive and renew visas in their home country.

I live near Portland, Oregon, and the two Korean consulates closest to me are in Seattle or San Francisco!  What a waste of time and money.  Here’s a list of all the Korean consulates in the United States.

Read the entire news article HERE or below: Continue reading »

Yesterday as I was getting dressed for class, Ras called from the other room, “Have you read the news?  There’s been a massive shooting in Virginia.”  At school, the other teachers and I talked about the shooting during the day.  There are monitors in the elevators and the cafeteria that broadcast CNN, so that’s how we got updated on what was going on.  During lunch, there were six of us having lunch as we watched CNN.  News was breaking about the description of the shooter - he was Asian and about 6 feet tall.  The first thing we all said, was that he’s either Chinese or Korean.  Actually, most of our hunches was that he was Korean… don’t know why, just a feeling.
I was watching an ABC News podcast this morning, and they were talking about the internet response to the shooting.  Even though there were some people referring to his race, others had enough sense to see that the shooter’s race shouldn’t matter.  There are many, many depressed people in the world, in this case, he just happened to be Asian.

For more information, check out The Marmot’s Hole, which is very comprehensive.  There isn’t a lot of news in the Korean English newspapers, but LOTS of stuff in the Korean news sites.  My students knew details about the shooting that even I didn’t.  Such sad news.  I’m glued to my computer reading about what happened, since I don’t have a TV.

Election results are in, and surprise, surprise, Democrats win in Oregon.  What I did find surprising were the statistics about library use in Portland.  The voters passed a levy that would provide more than $30 million a year over five years to pay for library operating costs.  The average cost for homeowners will be $11.13 a month ($133.56 a year).

In 2004-05, the last year for which national numbers are available, county residents borrowed 19.4 million books and other items, according to Penny Hummel, a library spokeswoman.  Portland libraries have the highest circulation numbers of any system in the nation.

That’s more than Los Angeles (15.7 million items), New York (15.5 million) and Chicago (6.9 million), Hummel said.

Just this morning, I saw at least 25 people waiting outside for the the downtown library to open.  I use the library a lot myself - going about twice a week.  Speaking of books, Portland also has the largest bookstore in the nation.  (Powell’s Bookstore has about 1 million new and used books on its shelves.)