Aliens At Last!
At long last we have attained our alien registration cards. First we needed our medical checkup results (a full medical checkup including blood tests, x-rays, dental check, vision and hearing tests, etc. costs less than $50 by the way); we had our checkups the day we arrived (Friday, Oct. 24), and it took them about a week to get our results back to us; it then took another week to actually get our alien cards processed. Without an alien card you get no bank account, no phone, and no internet; with an alien card, you receive all these things and more. Needless to say, we are very happy to have ours.
In case you're interested, mobile phones are incredibly expensive here for foreigners (I was told the cheapest one I could get was $400); fortunately I was able to get in on one of those cousin-brother's-uncle deals thanks to my co-teacher (who set us up as Koreans), and so I got ours for $50. Once you have the phones, the plans are more reasonable than in the US: we get 200 minutes a month for $10. Also, internet service is faster and cheaper here: our modem/router and install were "free," and we pay about $30 a month for the service. The bank book is, well, a bank book; we also got a check card with that--woohoo!
Nice!
That was very fast (I had my medical checkup on my fourth day...) and you got an even better family deal on your cell phone than I did, so congrats! Doesn't that laminated ARC make you feel all nice and official?
400,000!? They told me my cheapest option (before the discount) was 290,000...
Yep.
Yes to the ARC, and yes to the cell phone. When Mr. Song told me 400,000 I just stared at him blankly, not understanding what he was talking about. "No no, we want the cheapest one" I said. "Yes, 400,000 is cheapest for foreigner" he replied. At this point I decided that having a cell phone was maybe not so important after all
. I explained that we would probably have to go without, so then he got on his own mobile and started calling one person after another... after about half an hour he said, "okay, you can have cell phone for 70,000 because I say you Korean." [Sigh of relief]. Then we got to the place and they told us we could have it for 50!
(I then proceeded to do a really bad job bargaining on a blanket after school, but getting the 50,000 cell phone made up for it -- I don't know what it is about bargaining outside of the Middle East: I simply can't do it!)