First Week at Work & Buying a Car

The first week at work was very mind numbing. There was a lot of information and it was mostly meetings. It actually kind of felt like my former school districts collaborative days where we read articles and shared with different types of protocols or thinking routines. It was all right. The good news is that I have a really great bunch of co-workers at my site. There are two of us who are the same age (the old ladies) and the other three are also around the same age 24-25. However, we all get along really well. I'll teach Kindergarten and 3rd grade writing. We already met with the regular classroom teachers and they are really nice. I feel for the teachers because they have a lot of state mandated benchmarks to keep up with. Some schools do not even have art, PE, or music programs because they need to focus on raising test scores and they are given maps which tell them when to teach a subject and where they should be at certain points in the year. They also need to turn in their grades and progress reports to someone who does who knows what. It's really sad. Critical thinking is going out and short term memory test taking skills is being emphasized.

I thought I would have a lot of time after school to paint our room. However, car researching and visiting car lots have taken soooo much time! I have to say that I am a sucker, but I learn from mistakes. (That doesn't sound good...) Jerm and I have been thinking of getting a Mazda 5 because it is not quite a minivan, but it does have rear sliding doors and lots of space. Well, the first lot we went to was Cutter Mazda because it is closer to home than JN. We went in at 5:30 and we didn't leave until 10:00ish! The guy that helped us was nice and said he wasn't pushy, but he was totally pushy. He also told us that the other dealership were full of snakes. So, I was not very comfortable because if he were a genuine person, even if the other dealership was full of snakes he wouldn't have phrased it that way. The car that we wanted wasn't on the lot so he said he would drive us to the other lot to see it.....all the way in Waipahu! Yes, I am crazy and I didn't realize that it would take that long. He was nice enough to offer to buy us dinner which Jerm later informed me as a ploy to make us feel guilty. So, when I went to JN on Friday at 5:30, I set my watch timer and informed the salesperson that we had a dinner to go to at 7:30 so we needed to keep it short. That visit lasted 1 hour and 11 minutes. They were very nice and stayed cognizant about our "dinner" obligations. Plus, they won some sort of award from Mazda for customer service. I told them our budget and told them the reasons why we were sticking to it, and they worked hard to find a car to fit our needs. So, I highly recommend JN over Cutter. However, in the end, Jerm and I decided to ship Luna (our silver Outback) because it is all paid off and we decided that we didn't need another bill. At first I was pissed because I spent all that time and I'll need to call the salespeople. But, it was a good learning experience.

Today was our Okinawan picnic. This is something I've been attending all my life. We are members of Chatan/Kadena Sonjin Kai and it is a collection of Okinawan families. Every year they get together at Magic Island at the same place and each family has their usual spot. We play games such as water balloon relay, water balloon toss, boys against girls tug of war, and vegetable relay (the elders gather around and have 1 minute to collect as many vegetables as they can with just their arms and bodies). There is also a lucky number drawing. I won a sack of goodies: costco green bag, roll of paper towels, and 2 energy saving light bulbs. Mom and I also played water balloon relay where there were 3 lines and within each line each pair tosses a water balloon to the next pair via sheets held between the pairs and the line with the most water balloons to make it down the line wins. Our line tied with another which sent us to a sudden death round with just one balloon to see who can toss it down the line the fastest. We lost and got 2nd place. The highlight was seeing our friends twins: Reese and Avery.

Well, I will try to keep up with this blog thing and keep it more frequent and shorter.