Visas, and packing, and pizza! Oh, my!

So the past few days have been extremely hectic! Courtney and I got our EPIK contracts and NOAs (Notice of Appointment) on Tuesday. These two documents are really important because they are necessary for the E-2 Visa process. To get a visa we had to fill out a bunch of paper work, and send it to the Korean Consulate along with our working contract, NOA, passports, photos, and so on. It was really exciting when we finally got our stuff in the mail because we had been waiting for them for weeks, so we rejoiced! But of course, the smiles had to come to an end, and they did about 5 minutes into looking over my contract. It said that I was a US citizen, which I am not!! So as soon as I noticed this, I emailed my recruiter to tell her the problem and to ask her what to do. Anyway, it took almost a whole two days to straighten things out with EPIK and the consulate, so finally yesterday we sent out our visa applications. And now we wait. Oh but there is so many other things we get to think about before we leave in 18 days!! I find “to do” lists to be very effective.

To Do:

1. Wait for visa to come
2. Book flight (only after we get our visas)
3. Finish pre-orientation
4. Order TELF certificate
5. Receive and get diploma appostilled
6. Research camcorders
7. Take passport photo
8. Pack

Work clothes

Winter clothes (we live in Florida, so we have to think extra hard)
Documents

Toiletries
Things we can’t live without (books, yarn, crochet hooks, etc.)
Bed Sheets (we keep hearing they are hard to find in Korea)

Big towels (also hard to find in Korea)

Slack Line

Gloves
Shoes (apparently we have big feet by Korean standards)

So to take my mind off of all this stress, I decided to make a fantastic pizza. I spent 6 weeks in Italy last summer and I fell in love with how they made pizza with fresh mozzarella balls, and tomatoes just sitting on top. I just bought the dough raw from our local Publix grocery store, but there are tons of homemade dough recipes out there, if thats what you prefer. The one from Smitten Kitchen is what I would recommend.

Ingredients:

• Dough (recipes galore)
• 1 Jar of Pesto
• 2 Mozzarella Balls (I used 1 ball this time because it was big)
• Jar of Quartered Artichokes
• Mushrooms
• Roma Tomatoes

Cut up the veggies and cheese in slices. I'm sure you can slice better than I can.

Roll the dough out onto your pizza pan or cookie sheet in my case.

Spread a thin layer of pesto over the dough, all along the edges.

Put a small portion of the cheese slices on top of the pesto, and then pile on the mushrooms, artichokes and then tomato slices. Put the rest of the mozzarella on top of the veggies and pop it in the oven for about 25 minutes. In this picture I put the veggies on top of the cheese and only had a little to put on top of the veggies, but its better to have the cheese on top and let it melt down.

Finished product. It tastes even better than it looks! It was a hit with my roommate and my parents when I made it for them in the past.

Preheat the oven to 375 and roll out the dough. Cut the mozzarella, mushrooms and tomatoes into thin slices, and drain the artichokes from their liquid. Prepare your dough on a pizza dish; I make mine in a cookie sheet so its got a rectangular shape but you can make a more traditional round one if you want. Once the dough is rolled out and ready for toppings, spread a thin layer of pesto sauce all over it, including the crust (there really isn't too much a crust for this pizza). Put only a few slices of cheese on top of the pesto but save the majority of slices for the top layer. Next add your mushrooms, artichokes and tomatoes on top. Lastly, put the remainder of the mozzarella on top of the tomatoes and put your pizza in the oven to bake for about 25 minutes. I chose mushrooms and artichokes on mine because I love them oh so much, but of course you have substitute them for your favorite pizza toppings.