Lassen Backpacking Trip

Well, this has been a great summer so far, and it's not over yet. Tomorrow I leave for a backpacking trip with Troop 58. The scouts participating are Ryan Avella, Sean Avella, Collin Caskey, Jared Quast, Noah Peterson, Spencer Peterson, and James Scharfen. The adults are Mike Avella, Jeff Scharfen, and myself. Mike Avella and Jeff Scharfen will be driving. We will be going to Lassen Volcanic National Park, parking at Summit Lake, and hiking a few miles per day (with backpacks) around a short loop. There is an optional day hike to Cinder Cone, approximately 10 miles long. We will return the evening of Sunday, the 2nd of August.

I am completely finished packing. My pack weighs in at 44.8 pounds, or 29.5% of my clothed body weight. This is in spite of using an obsolete, external-frame backpack that dates back to the time I was 15 years old. I have balanced the load to my satisfaction, and packed everything that I want to bring, except some things that I will be wearing on my person. I will also be taking my old stave, which has a hook in the top for pulling down bear bags, and a line wound around the top which I use as a handle, and also doubles as extra line in an emergency.

For troop gear, I am carrying one MSR stove, two fuel cannisters, two light cleanup tubs, one cooking pot, two cooking utensils, and my own mini pepper grinder. I am carrying some of my personal food for lunches, plus one shared box of Ritz crackers. I think I got the short end of the stick, carrying more gear and less food, which means my load will not lighten significantly over the course of the trip. On the other hand, I may be starting out with a somewhat lighter load.

I am bringing my own tent, a full first-aid kit, a cleanup kit with two tubs, paracord for bear bags, etc., and my water filter. This is my first time carrying my own water filter, or my own washtubs. My tubs have lids, and will double as buoys if we set up a safe swim area. I figure that as an adult leader over 21, I had better bring these things along, for the good of the troop. I think it's part of setting a good example of being prepared.

We plan to leave the church tomorrow at 06:00, which means that I'm geting up at 05:00, throwing on my uniform, scarfing down breakfast, and rolling out at 05:30. That means I need to get a good dinner, shower, and get to bed.

I am really looking forward to this. It's been about ten years since I last went backpacking. I feel like I'm ready for a 50-miler, but I know I'm out of shape, and it's probably good that this is an easy trip, so I won't be embarrassed.

Well, it's high time for dinner, and I don't expect to make another post before I return, so this is Sean Pearson, signing out.

Camp Fleischmann Report

Well, all the scouts and scouters of Troop 58 made it back from Camp Fleischmann safe and sound. We had a few scrapes and cuts, none dangerous. A few splinters, one case of frog-eating (on a bet), and one incident of car-sickness (on the return trip).

Troop 58 acquitted itself honorably, winning the Peter Lassen award for the best-spirited, most worthy troop on the far side of the lake, with full points. (We were also known as the "church troop", probably because of the crosses on our hats and neckerchiefs.) The younger scouts worked on rank advancement, with most of the new scouts completing all requirements for Tenderfoot, several completing all requirements for Second Class, and some scouts almost ready to earn First Class rank. I taught knots & lashings, bandages, and rescue carries/drags for the First Class rank requirements.

Here are some pictures of what the scouts learned:

I let them tie me up to demonstrate their ability to splint broken bones.

Zach, Jake, and Mario are practicing the two-man rescue carry.

Brendon Caskey made a first-class pack rack for a camp gadget.

Mario Balitbit caught a garter snake.

Many of the scouts earned 5+ merit badges, including some unusual ones like Metalworking, Salesmanship, Paper & Pulp, and Weather. At least one scout earned the Lifesaving merit badge, and one adult scouter earned the BSA Lifeguard award. The troop participated in the camp flag ceremony, trail restoration, food serving and cleanup, and, of course, the campwide games, where the Dragon patrol won 2nd place out of at least 20 patrols. Some scouts had fun trading patches with an international scout from the Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan).

When I wasn't teaching scout skills or checking up on the scouts' progress, I spent as much time as possible at Eagle Creek, the climbing area. Eagle Creek is run by Jim (the First), an older Venture Scouter who believes climbing is a way for scouts to develop self-confidence. He treats his staff very well, and they love him. I learned how to fasten a harness, and how to tie two important climbing knots, the figure-8 follow-through and the safety knot. More importantly, I learned more deeply the importance of believing in oneself, and also the importance of the PDCA process (Plan, Do, Check, Adjust.) There was one route, the purple route on Wibb's Walll (which has an overhang), which took me four tries to climb successfully. I was allowed two free holds of any color, and it helped to plan where I was going to use those holds.

I started on Sunday night, and on Monday I was the first camper that week to climb the surf route, which is colored blue and green, and has holds that are shaped like waves. I named it Fountains of the Deep (see Genesis 7:11), and wrote my name and troop number on the route name sheet. I had more fun in two days at Camp Fleischmann than I had in a whole week at the National Jamboree. That's probably because my companions were better, and I spent time doing what I really wanted to do, which was teaching scouts and climbing the walls (literally).

Here's a video of Mike, one of the Eagle Creek staff, executing a "Dino" on Wibb's Wall:

There was one serious discipline issue that the scoutmasters had to deal with while at camp. One of the scouts had some contraband material that had to be confiscated. What made it worse was that other scouts knew of the material and failed to report it. All the scouts involved were taken up the trail by Steve Danelz (a.k.a. "Mr. D", the Scoutmaster) and Eric Johnson Sr., who is a pastor. Eric spoke to them about the moral issues involved, and each one had to write a letter to his parents, explaining what he did. Steve Danelz planned to read the letters (checking for accuracy), and then deliver them to the parents. This was a good lesson for me on dealing with serious moral issues at camp.

There was also an ongoing concern about the scouts getting too close (physically) to some of the female staffers, and also at least one young woman who was camping with a troop (presumably with her family). Steve doesn't mind the scouts having relationships with members of the opposite sex, but he feels it's inappropriate at scout camp. When he asked how I would feel if it were my daughter, I realized that I wouldn't let my daughter out of my sight at a camp full of boys, even boy scouts. I started reprimanding the boys for obvious flirting, and referred any questions to Mr. D.

However, we still had a chance to relax.

Here's a shot of Mike Avella catching a few Z's.

On the last night, there was a campfire with lots of entertainment, mostly scout-led. There was one demonstration of a hoop dance (not scout-led) that was very impressive. I managed to get it on video. Hope you can view this.

Camp Fleischmann

Tomorrow morning at 06:00, I'll be leaving to go camping with Troop 58 of Redwood Empire Council, Boy Scouts of America. (In 1996, I became the fourth Eagle Scout from that troop.) I am currently volunteering as an Assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 58, and the Troop Committee, as standard operating procedure, has paid my camp fee, because I will be giving my time for the good of the troop.

We will be going to Camp Fleischmann, a summer camp facility operated by Nevada Area Council in the Lassen National Forest. The drive will take about 5.5 hours. I will be getting up at 04:30. (Yes, I'm up past my bedtime.) Fortunately, I will not be driving further than the troop meetup point in southeast Santa Rosa.

I will try to take pictures, but I don't know if I'll be able to recharge my camera battery. I will be up in the mountains, completely incommunicado for the next week, unless an emergency message reaches me. So, this is my sign-off. I will be back next Saturday in the late afternoon/early evening. Until then, this is Sean Pearson, signing out.

Bad News

Well, just when I think I've got things figured out, I get a curveball in my inbox. My recruiter sent this out on Thursday night, and I received it on the morning of Friday, 10 July 2009:

Hi, Sean

Bad news.
The school decided not to hire you because of ADH you have. Sorry.

Please explain specifically about the symptom, treatment(any madicine you take regulary) and your condition and so on.
After getting your response, we will try with another school.

Regards,
Mina

This doesn't seem right, for multiple reasons:

1. In the U.S., it is illegal to discriminate based on a recognized disability such as AD/HD, if the applicant can perform the job with reasonable accommodation. Of course, this doesn't apply outside the U.S., so I can't judge them based on our laws.


2. The recruiter told me that, by sending a scanned copy of the signed contract, I was committed to this position. She said that if I pulled out at this point, then no other public school in the province would hire me. Yet they can drop me with no consequences. I think this is an inappropriate double standard.

Of course, this is all in God's hands. I need to learn to trust Him more. I have e-mailed two other recruiters that seem good, and told them I am open to new offers. Of course, I also e-mailed the first recruiter with the information she requested. I think I may also consider applying to GEPIK directly. I don't know if that would be better or not.

I need your prayers for this situation, that God's will would be made clear to me.

Clarifying the Contract

Well, It's probably about time to make another post before I leave for a weeklong camping trip with Boy Scouts at Camp Fleischmann.

I left off on about 17 June 2009, where I had sent in some electronic documents to secure the first job offer. I still had some time before I could send in the physical documents, and I believed I could continue to entertain job offers in the meantime. I let the other recruiters work on procuring alternate offers, while I worked on procuring the necessary documents.

Taking any kind of paid position overseas requires a work visa; in this case, an E–2 visa. This is a visa issued by the Republic of Korea to Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) who have been sponsored by an employer. The visa term is one year in length, and can be renewed any number of times if the requirements are met.

In order for an employer to sponsor my visa, they have to submit an application to the South Korean Bureau of Immigration. This application packet must include several documents to verify my eligibility for the E–2 visa. The signed contract is proof of employment, but other documents are required as well. These include proof of a clean criminal history, proof of academic eligibility for employment as a NEST, and passport-sized photographs. Procuring all these items took me some time.

For one thing, I was required to submit my college diploma (in my case, both of them), either the originals or specially certified copies. My diplomas were at my parents' house in Brentwood, almost two hours' drive from where I live. My parents would be visiting me for my birthday on the 26th, and I asked them to bring the diplomas at that time, which they did.

I also needed officially sealed copies of my academic transcripts. These were easily procured by faxing requests to SPU, where I earned my B.S. in Computer Science, and SSU, where I earned a B.S. in Mathematics, with Distinction. The SSU transcripts arrived first, followed at length by the SPU transcripts.

For proof of a clean criminal history, I needed a certified copy of a recent criminal background check (CBC). That required making an appointment to be fingerprinted at a local electronic fingerprinting business. The hardest part was figuring out the process required by the state Department of Justice to request a CBC for this purpose. They did have instructions on their website for requesting a background clearance for the purposes of visa issuance. I went to the fingerprinting place, paid my money, got fingerprinted, and waited for the CBC to arrive, which it did in due course, sometime before the 26th of June.

Since I planned to retain the original documents, I needed to get properly certified copies. There is a type of document called an apostille, which is attached to an official document in one country to verify the authenticity of a signature to parties in another country. Only parties in countries that are both signatories of the relevant treaty can use the apostille process. South Korea and the U.S.A. are both signatories. Canada is not. This simplified my job a little bit, relative to a Canadian applicant, but the process was still fairly involved, as you will see. The most difficult problem was making sure that I was not agreeing to a year of hell on earth, with an unscrupulous employer and an impossible work assignment. My first line of defense was the contract itself.

This contract, as mentioned before, is in Korean, with an English translation for convenience. The English translation has no legal force. So, I was legally agreeing to a contract that I could not read. Obviously, I was not perfectly sanguine about this prospect. Moreover, from my understanding, in Korea the legal contract is generally considered a starting point, open to further informal negotiation. In addition, it would be difficult for me to hold my employer to the terms of the contract, if the employer wast trying to cheat me. (This much I learned from reading the posts of NESTs on Dave's ESL Café, while I waited for my required documents to arrive.) This meant that the most important thing to determine was the moral character of the employer.

I therefore asked my recruiter for more information about the job, the employer, the housing, everything. She provided some information, but not all that I asked for. She was just about fed up with me, and told me that if I did not accept this position, after sending an electronic copy of the signed document, I could not get another public school position anywhere in that province.

Just then, by Providence, another one of my research efforts paid off. A few days earlier, I had posted a question on Dave's ESL Café, asking about Samsoong Elementary, the school at which the recruiter had offered me a position. On the 23rd of June, I got an e-mail with the subject line, "I work at Samsoong Elementary!" from someone I'll call "J".

J wrote in fluent and grammatically correct (informal) American English, using up-to-date idioms native to electronic media. She described the school, the students, the principal, and everything else in glowing terms. She mentioned some minor adjustments that I would need to expect, such as the need for cash to live on while I waited for the settlement allowance. It was almost too good to be true.

I would be working at a school with another NEST, I would get the age group I wanted, and my future co-teacher was really cool. In answer to my questions, she affirmed that she was paid fairly, treated kindly, used creatively, and that her work was meaningful and full of integrity. Given those four essentials, and the authenticity of her writing, all my worries were laid to rest. She could not possibly be a paid shill, as any trickery would be unmasked as soon as I arrived at the school. There could not possibly be better assignment in all of Korea than the job I had lined up.

That same day, 23 June 2009, I e-mailed the recruiter and told her not to worry. I told her about finding J, and that J's positive attitude meant that I was very likely to arrive as planned. Having laid those issues to rest, I eagerly lapped up all of J's e-mails, and prepared for assembling the packet to send to the recruiter.

Having assured myself that the assignment was a good one, I prepared for my next big day, Monday, 29 June 2009, which was the first business day when I would have all the documents I needed. I analyzed my options, taking into account the time and money required for each. With this analysis, I decided on the following procedure, and planned my day accordingly.

First, I had to have copies made of my diplomas and CRC, and sign an affidavit for each copy, affirming its authenticity, under penalty of perjury. My signature on each affidavit had to be notarized, and my credit union offered three signatures notarized per month for free, which was exactly what I needed. On Monday morning I went to Redwood Credit Union (RCU), had my two diplomas and my CRC photocopied, and I signed affidavits of authenticity, which were attached to these copies. My signatures were notarized, and I was off on the next stage of my quest, the apostille stage.

The party responsible for providing an apostille in California is the California Secretary of State. This can be done by mail order, for $20 per signature certified, with a turnaround time of about two weeks. Or, for an additional $6, I could drive to the State Building in Sacramento and submit the documents for expedited processing, with a maximum one-hour turnaround time. Based on the time required for subsequent steps, and my desire to leave in September, this was the option I chose. So, I filled up my gas tank at Costco, and then drove to Sacramento. The drive was rather uneventful, and not entirely novel, as I had recently driven to Sacramento to take my real estate licensing test. This time, however, I had to pay for parking in a garage, $1.25 per 20 minutes.

Sacramento was hot, but the building was air conditioned. I paid $66, and and my documents were processed immediately. After taking some digital photos of the building, I was out of the parking garage within 40 minutes.

(Here are some of the photos I took. The first two were taken in an interior courtyard of the State Building, a monument to the values enshrined in the State's founding documents. I also took a picture of the front of the State Building, and of the Archive Building, with a block of granite engraved with the year the foundation was laid.)

Another drive of almost two hours, interrupted only by one phone call, and I was back in Santa Rosa. At that point, I had some more work to do. I had to print out three copies of my 15-page contract, sign each page, and assemble the documents, making sure I had everything that was required.

The recruiter required three signed copies of the contract. Since I was using high-quality paper (having run out of the standard grade), I decided to print them double-sided to save shipping weight, which turned out to be a wise choice. I had some problems with the page order, but I managed to get all three copies printed in duplex, and signed. I assembled all the other documents, except for the photos (which I did not have yet), and weighed the packet on a postal scale on loan from my parents. The packet was about 15 ounces in weight. An analysis of prices indicated that UPS was the most economical way to send the packet. However, FedEx had an onsite photo station. By that time, the UPS office was closed, so I decided to leave off until the morning.

The next morning, Tuesday, 30 June 2009, I went to FedEx Office downtown and had my picture taken. I had two pairs printed up, and took them to the UPS office nearest my home. This UPS office is right across the parking lot from RCU, where I had my copies notarized. It would have been very convenient if I hadn't had two other places to visit, and a contract to print, between notarization and sending.

At UPS, the hardest part was figuring out how to format the Korean address using UPS addressing software. Finally it was done to my satisfaction, and a copy of the address as given to me by the recruiter was taped onto the package as well. I paid about $53, and received a promise that the documents would arrive by noon on Friday, Korean time. I went home, and sent the tracking number to the recruiter. Now, I had to wait for the document to arrive in Korea, be sent to the school district, then the Bureau of Immigration, and my visa number to be issued. Meanwhile I had other things to do, including preparations for my travels. But, that's the subject of another post.

Fireworks Show

Today I had a fun day. My roommate took me out to lunch, and to see the new Transformers® movie, as a belated birthday present. We both really enjoyed it. Afterwards I cooked some stir-fried vegetables and rice. (I figure I'd better get used to cooking with Asian foodstuffs.) Later I went to a fireworks show at Windsor High School, put on by the high school boosters. Yes, we know it's only the 3rd, but that makes it a lot cheaper to hire the pyrotechnics service, and the show is no worse for being a day early. I'll probably go to another show tomorrow. Here are some pictures that I took of the show.

And here is a video that I took of the grand finalé. It took me a second (in the dark) to get my camera into video mode, so I didn't get as much as I wanted, but I got the best part. You can hear the music and cheering as well as the fireworks.

A New Direction

Well, here I am, starting a blog. I'm definitely not an early adopter of this technology. Before this month, I never really felt the need to keep a diary that I could share with the entire world. At this time, however, I am starting on a new phase in my life, one that will take me far away from my current friends, family, and familiar surroundings. I'm starting this blog as a means of keeping my friends and family updated on the exciting changes going on in my life.

Many of you have heard by now that I am going to Korea. This is a big change for me, Sean Pearson the California boy. Yes, I once spent three months in Africa as an infant (which I do not remember, although the slides are interesting.) And yes, I spent a year in Oklahoma with my parents when was two years old. And yes, I have traveled within the United States, and spent four years going to school in Seattle, WA. And yes, I've been to Canada for a day. However, California (specifically, Northern California) has always been my home.

Some of you are probably wondering, "Why Korea? And why now?" Let me answer that with a story.

A few weeks ago, on the 5th of June, 2009, I was on Craigslist looking for someone who would be willing to join me in my existing business, when I ran across a post advertising for English teachers in Korea. At this point I was pretty discouraged in my business, my financial situation was getting more difficult, and I was just about open for anything that showed some promise. The ad offered good terms, and the qualifications listed were ones I could meet. I e-mailed the recruiter, and he asked for my information. I sent him what I could, and he told me he needed copies of diplomas that I did not have on hand. I told him I'd send them when I had them.

A little later, I remembered that my friend Dominic Lynch had come back from teaching English in Korea, and I e-mailed him to ask for advice. Dom gave me some good advice, and pointed me in the right direction to find more options for teaching English overseas. I posted my résumé on Dave's ESL Café, and I immediately had over a dozen recruiters asking me to let them find me a teaching job in Korea. Wow, what a difference from the local job market!

To make a long story short, not every recruiter required a copy of my diploma before they could match me with a position. In this business, those who move quickly are rewarded. One recruiter found a compatible position, and secured a specific job offer for me, well before any of the others. I gave some of the other recruiters a chance to make a competing offer, but none of them came through before I had to make a decision on the first offer. It seemed good enough, although I didn't have all the specifics I wanted. I accepted the offer and e-mailed a scanned copy of the signed contract to secure the job.

That was on the 17th of June, 2009. That was a commitment that I did not fully understand, and not only because the contract was written in Korean with an imperfect (and not legally binding) English translation. I also did not realize that although an e-mailed copy of a contract was not legally binding, I could not back out without killing my chances of getting a teaching job anywhere in that school system. I did want to work in that school system, for reasons I'll explain later. In fact, the time between e-mailing a signed contract, and sending off the entire contracting packet by UPS, should probably be explained in the next post. Later I will also explain the details of the offer, my duties, and what I expect to do in Korea.