Food, Interviews and travel news

I am very excited because Matt and I are going to Phuket for Chinese New Year! It was a last minute decision, but I am so glad we have a trip coming up. Strangely, I feel like I haven't seen Matt for a long time. We were separate for most of Christmas and life is so hectic here in Hong Kong. He works late, so I spend most of my time with my girlfriends, or if we are together, we are usually out with a bunch of other people. This weekend he was showing around the RCA marketing team, and had soccer, so I hung out with Kelly and then we had a huge Chinese dinner at a place called the Red Pepper in honor of a friend that is going to be out of town for a while. It was so delicious! Somehow, Matt and I ended up taking home all the leftovers...I am never sure how this happens, but it is always US that takes home the extra food! Everyone else says no and scurries away and we must look like easy targets or something. Anyway, now I have had Chinese food every meal for the past two days. The meal was a FEAST: we ordered a whole duck cooked Beijing Style, a whole deep fried Garoupa fish, sizzling chili jumbo prawns, beef with black bean sauce, sweet and sour chicken and broccoli. For dessert, we had banana and apple chunks dipped in toffee. Then at the table, the waiter puts the toffee-dipped pieces in a bowl of ice water, so that the fruit is warm and soft inside but the toffee is crunchy and delicious. It was outstanding! I have had a lot of Beijing (Peking) duck lately. I like it, but I get sick of being forced to eat the slices of skin and fat that they serve up to your first....I like the meat that is inside better. I think they give you the skin and fat first cause that is supposed to be the "good" part, but in my opinion it isn't.

I have had two job interviews this week. The first was at a school for autistic children, for the position of a behavioral analyst. The woman who started the school has two autistic children, and she felt that there weren't any good programs for autistic children in Hong Kong, so she started her own. She uses the applied behavioral modification method, and feels that it is far more effective than other methods. She started the school with her own money and it is a nonprofit, so when she found out I didn't already have a work visa, she was very disappointed! Apparently it is expensive and time consuming to sponsor someone for a work visa. I can understand why she would be hesitant to do that when there are plenty of Hong Kong English speaking residents that could do the job. The other interview was with the mad science learning center, which uses inquiry based learning methods to teach science to elementary school students. Basically, it is exactly the same job I was doing at the Explorit Center in Davis, and it is part time and flexible, so it would be perfect for me. I was offered the job, but when I brought up the work visa issue, the man's face dropped! So, I think it will be harder to get a job here than I had initially thought, unless I end up teaching English, where they expect to have to provide a work visa. For some reason, I have a mental block against teaching English! It might be more fun than I think...but I think I will hold out until at least after Chinese New Year.