Interview with Lola Kapris

she lives here

This is an interview with my friend Lola, who has been living and working in Hong Kong for the last few months. 

I think this is a great story, because she is from Serbia and really went for what she wanted and got herself somewhere different and changed her life. Lots of my friends in Serbia feel kind of trapped here, without much hope for the future. I understand that it is easier for me to travel and fulfil my dreams with my British passport and freedom to go where I want to go, but I do think its possible for anyone to make and break if its what they really want to do. I have known Lola for around 5 years and I have seen her go through so many things. I know that to get to where she is today she struggled through so many things and tried many, many times before she was successful. I saw her at many times really discouraged from her efforts, she wrote so many different interviews and sent her CV to lots of places before she actually got accepted for Hong Kong. She also had a lot of options fall through and things go wrong at the last minute, including her visa for Hong Kong, which took an extra 2 months, where she was waiting and did not know if she would even get it.

I have seen her go through ups and downs and I really respect her and think that her story is especially inspirational. Enjoy the interview everyone

1. Explain to us what you are doing in Hong Kong, and how your life is like there?

My official title is ‘International tutor’ and my job includes teaching English, organizing interactive workshops and ESL activities as well as providing pastoral care to the students in my student hostel. My life here is pretty nice. Hong Kong is an amazing, vibrant place to live in because it has a huge variety of food, especially Asian food from all over Asia, a lot of expats just like me, a transportation system that’s one of the best in the world, as well as a very low crime rate. So believe it or not, even if you lose your wallet or phone, there’s a higher chance it will be returned to you safely rather than it disappearing (which did happen to my friend, twice… so yeah). All I do here is work until 4 pm mostly (my working hours are flexible) and then I go and eat some nice food and meet friends in the evening to either eat again (warning: it’s easy to get fat here) or go to happy hours that are easy to find. On special days, we go and visit temples or go hiking and so on, so it’s pretty awesome. Lot’s to do.

2. What was the journey you went through to get to where you are now?

Umm, well, back in Serbia I had three jobs (including working in the café which I loved and miss so much) but none of them were lucrative enough to give me a nice life, so I had to look for something better, because I was really low on money. I had to go through a lot of different job interviews and turn downs before I got this one, so it was really stressful, but definitely worth waiting for.

3. For a young person coming from Serbia what are the obstacles you faced to find a job in Hong Kong?

Well, it’s always great when people ask you where you’re from and you say Serbia and they’re like ‘Oh..’ in a tone filled with disappointment, but for me personally, it was hard to get an English teaching job because they wanted native speakers and obviously I’m not one, so I had to prove that I was good enough to work with native speakers. It was a challenge for sure, but actually we’ve all established that it’s better to have both native speakers and people like me, because students can relate more to me (because English is my second language too) while they can learn more about the culture and study abroad programs from them, so it’s basically a win-win situation.

4. What advice would you give for other young people who want to do something similar?

Do it. We’re young now and now is the best time to take risks and discover what it is that you want to do in life. If you decide to leave your comfort zone and explore, you’ll learn so much more about yourself and how to be alone, make new friends, overcome obstacles at work, get in touch with your roots even more and grow in so many different ways. The biggest lesson I learnt from this experience is that the world is so small and that nothing is impossible if you really put your mind to it. There are no excuses. All you need to do is work, work, work. :D

5. What motivated you to push through until you got to where you needed to go?

Mostly the fact that I had no more money and that I would probably get sick if I continued in that pace. There were only two options for me and they were either go and get a better life or stay and be miserable forever. So I chose to go and even though I miss my boyfriend, family and friends (who gave me so much support through all this) and other things about my country, there are still many more opportunities here for me to pursue and become who I want to be eventually. I chose to be happier, simple as that.

6. What do you see happening in your future and where do you want to go from here?

So many things need to happen in my future. I want to become a better teacher, get even more certificates and my master degree, try to work in other countries too and see how they do things. I want to learn a lot about teaching, to see how education is changing and be a part of that change. 

where she really belongs... at CE with me :)

Her teaching crew in Hong Kong