It's already been a month!

I can't believe we only have 21 days left. It has been such a crazy experience so far! It seems as though we have done most of the touristy things and seen the main sights, I feel like now I want to spend more time exploring the random places, the little markets, etc. We spent the weekend at the beach which was much needed after the stressful work week. Now that I know my way around the city, I feel less and less like a tourist, but it seems like more and more people are reacting strangely to us on the streets and in the trains. Now that I have been here for a month, I notice more and more how the people react to western foreigners, I feel their stares and their judgements and its starting to get to me at times. As much as I enjoy being in this city, I am getting quite home sick. I am realizing that as much as I've always wanted to find my place in Asia, it seems as though the American in me, will never seise to exist. I think that spending as much time in Asia as I can will still be a goal of mine but I don't know if my home can be so far away from the people I love. Anyways, at work I finished my projects quite quickly but they were interesting. It seems as though the campaign projects are not going to be something within my ability considering that it would take a lot of work from other interns to translate things first, oh well. Instead they have me doing research projects, I was working on a comparison of the different metro systems in Asia because the Democratic party is trying to lobby for a policy change related to public transportation. It is already very efficient and quite cheap to our US standards but they are working to make it even better! Due to the high cost of living in HK, the people are spending way too much to travel long distances on the MTR. The cost round trip per day for a person traveling around an hour which is literally opposite sides of the city is about $40-60 HK = about $5-8 USD. It seems almost reasonable to me considering how much it costs in DC to travel around on the metro and how long it takes just to get from vienna to downtown, but the Hong Kong people are very dependent on the public transportation and they need it to be faster and cheaper so that over 90% of the population can get to work every day! I have made spread sheets to compare the costs of the metro rails in Singapore and Taiwan in relation to HK, its quite interesting to see the costs in comparison to the amount of money the average person or the lower income person makes each month, it definitely does get expensive. The Democratic party really does work for the people and its nice to feel like I am putting together research about something that will help the city as a whole! I am also working on a project related to property management licensing, its complicated in HK because almost everyone lives in high rise apartments and the rent is so high that they are worried about a monopoly if they don't adopt a system similar to the US. I have been trying to explain that we have many complications as well with the property laws, but I am still putting together information that will help them lobby for a licensing and help them decide whether they want to adopt a single or multi-tier system, which until this week, I did not know much about myself. I am hoping that more projects are going to be created for me because as of right now, I am finished with everything I am able to do. Like I said before, the language barrier has made it a little difficult for me to find work, but they do always seem to find me something last minute. It's been quite an experience getting use to being a working person in HK, working 10-6 everyday and being in the daily commute. I'm not apart of that in the US so having my first true time as a "working woman" in a foreign city has made me realize that I can do anything!