My FBI background check arrived!!!

I am so late in updating this blog! Something so wonderfully, fantastically exciting happened two weeks ago and you still don't know about it. Please allow me to fix this dismal state of affairs.

MY FBI BACKGROUND CHECK ARRIVED!!!

I sincerely wish I had a picture of me proudly holding that piece of paper. Alas, I don't have a cool iPhone or really any cool phone that takes pictures. I'm still in the stone age with a flip phone. But please imagine for a moment a quiet Monday evening around ten o'clock at night. All is peaceful until a piercing shriek is emitted from upstairs and what sounds like a half-crazed animal comes bounding down the stairs quicker than you've ever seen any human move. This yelping, happy, bouncing human proceeds to wake up her brother (who goes to bed a 9:30 pm anyways?) and proudly announces to the only-slightly-bemused brother and partially-horrified-but-still-pretending-to-be-uber-excited mother that the long-awaited FBI background check has finally arrived.

There, wasn't that better than any picture?

Up next, putting the apostille stamp on the (finally present) FBI background check. This process could be another blog post because this itty-bitty little stamp has caused enough drama already. However, I doubt I would get around to another post in the near future so ... let's catch you up!

I received the FBI background check on Monday night, February 6th. Of course it would arrive just as I was leaving town EARLY the next morning for five days. I shot off an email to my contacts in South Korea, double-checking to make sure that I send the FBI background check into the Office of Authentications in Washington DC. I held off mailing the document until I could make a copy and hear back from South Korea. Surprisingly, when I did hear back, I was told NOT to send the FBI background check to Washington DC and to just take it to any place that would apostille the document locally. One Google search and a phone call to the Cook County Clerk's office in Chicago, I found out that it only costs $2 per document and can be done in one day. What I should have asked in that phone call was if they were authorized to apostille federal level FBI background checks. So I arrived on Thursday, February 16, with my documents in hand, all ready to hand them over to the kind person who was saving me a trip to Washington DC or the 6-8 weeks worth of waiting if the documents went by mail. The kind lady REJECTED my FBI background check! What?! Why? She told me that that specific document had to go through the Office of Authentications in Washington DC and that she couldn't apostille it here in Chicago. Talk about utterly disappointing. I was so crushed. I so badly wanted to send all my documents - the signed contract, the health forms, my resume, my diploma, and the FBI background check - to South Korea that afternoon.

Currently I have the FBI background in hand and will be sending it out tomorrow. My prayer is that if I send it FedEx it will arrive the next day and won't have to go through the irradiation process that regular mail has to go through. Hopefully, I'll have it in 10-11 business days.

So that's what's new. I am eagerly awaiting another piece of mail and even more eagerly awaiting the day when I can start teaching again. I simply feel so blessed to have this job and I cannot wait to get to Seoul and begin. I am kind of hoping that I can get an iPhone when I arrive. Then I'll take pictures of my cool documents or other cool things so you can see and enjoy them too.