Vacation Prep

It's always something, isn't it? If you buy tickets to a movie, they give you shitty seats. If you want a decent burger for cheap, it's across town and takes an hour to get there. If you want to date a girl, she's a virgin. Well, today I had another one: if you want to get your money, they won't pay you until Friday.

I was originally supposed to get paid last Friday. It was money from the three-week summer camp that just finished. It totaled to about $1000. The lady in charge of the money promised us that we would have it before camp ended. The last day came, though, and the money wasn't there. I was a little worried. But, I thought, it's Friday--maybe the transaction won't go through until the end of the business day. Maybe it won't even be there until Saturday morning. So I waited. Then Saturday came and it still wasn't there. Now I started panicking. I'm leaving on Wednesday for the Philippines, and there are only two business days for them to transfer the funds. This is bad because in Korea, two days isn't enough.

I tried to take care of it today. That of course was hard. There are layers upon layers of people to talk to. First is the metropolitan school board. They said to talk to the district. I talked to the district, and they said talk to my school. I talked to my school, and they didn't speak English. Great. Finally, I found (meaning got the phone number of) the assistant to the lady with the money. She helped the lady with the money that ran the camp. But of course, she didn't have the answers. She said the lady with the money was out of the country and unable to be contacted.

Long story short, the assistant to the money lady said that the money lady just didn't do it. She left without doing the paperwork for our paychecks. The assistant told me that now the school has to do the paperwork, and we will get paid at the latest on Friday. That of course is too late, so I tomorrow I will get up bright and early to hound these people. I will first go to the military base to get some cheap American breakfast, and if I don't have my money by then, I will go and start some shit.

The bright side: my iPod is alive again. I went to the service shop, and it--although small, crowded and requiring an hour to find--fixed my problem. You know what it was? My plug was bad. It wasn't the heat, it was the goddamn plug.

Just think. In two days I will be here: