Hiatus

Apologies for the long delay in posts. It has been an eventful couple of months. For most of October I was attending successive interviews for a immigrant-related job in Manhattan, which was a great experience. I made it to the final interviewing round, but didn't get the job offer in the end, probably because I lack the specific skills in assisting immigrants in the specific way the employer required (they are a startup so wanted somebody who could start with as little training as possible). It was encouraging to make it through the first three selection rounds though as it showed I have the experience and soft skills to break into the nonprofit job market here.

James, my brother, then came and visited in November, and we had a great month together. Saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah play in the Bowery Ballroom in NYC, visited Mum's American family upstate, ate the biggest steak I have ever seen at an old popular mafia hangout steakhouse, saw the Knicks lose to the Magic at Madison Square Garden, visited the Chibana family in Indiana for thanksgiving, played golf with deer on the course, and generally had fantastic fun together. It was sad to see him go, but hopefully we will be back together again before too long.

Then we drove back to Indiana again for Christmas. It was really nice to have a happy family Christmas again for the first time in a very very long time - longer than I can remember. That's one of the consequences of living overseas for so long. We got to relax with everybody, eat obscene amounts of wonderful home cooking thanks to Mom, some excellent Japanese food courtesy of Dad, and spend lots of quality time together. The craziest thing I got to see was a nearby house with an uncountable number of Christmas lights all over the house and yard and trees, that all played synchronised to a radio station with a 10 minute Christmas rock mix that had been set up specially for it (you can see it on Youtube here).

In the meantime I have been networking to find work, which has been going quite well. I have begun training for a local voluntary counseling organisation, and should start training in February for another voluntary organisation where I can qualify to represent foster children in court, so that's quite exciting. At the moment I'm trying to decide if I need to go back to school to do a masters in social work in order to get where I want to be in the work world, so I have an appointment set up next week with a local university that was recommended to me by a very kind local who gave me 20 minutes of her time last week to talk about my career direction.

It's frustrating to still be out of work, but things are moving along. It's taking longer than normal partly due to the complication of being an immigrant with no local experience, and partly due to the recession and increasing unemployment in the region. However, a qualification in the field and a good amount of volunteer experience should set me up to get in, so we'll see how it goes.

Kristy is working very hard and doing very well at her school, some of her students say hers is their favorite class, which is very encouraging. She has been breadwinning for us for the last few months, but if I get into a course then I'll find some part time work to contribute. Despite the usual integration difficulties, we are both quite happy in this new place and it is good to be looking forward to setting up a long-term future here. We'll keep you all posted on how things turn out in this new year!