Four-Wheels

The serious part:

We have long been talking about getting a car, especially when we have a family. Well, the family bit is well under way, so we began to get more serious about getting a car. About a year ago, we mentioned to Paul, Bethany's general manager, that we would like a car. We also mentioned that we didn't want to pay that much as we didn't have that much to spend. Every once in a while for the past year, I would run a car ad passed Paul and he would immediately say no. It seemed like he didn't think anything in our price range would be suitable.
When this school year started, our friends and co-workers, the Jakolas, also mentioned to Paul that they would be needing a new car as they were expecting their third child. Immediately, I asked if we could have their car when they got a new one. Unfortunately, we were already third in line for their car.
Now, Paul, was trying to look for 3 cars for 3 different Bethany families. One family got their car within 2 weeks and so we were expecting a similar thing. Nothing happened...except we went from number 3 in line for the Jakolas to number 1. That's at least promising!
About 3 weeks ago, I had just about given up. "Lord, we don't really need a car, right? We can just tote Baby Su around on the bus, MRT and scooter (just joking!), right?" That very day, Kristin Jakola told us that someone might be willing to sell them a car for very cheap, and thus, freeing up a car for us. By that weekend, there was a car sitting at the school and it was now "the Sus car." To add to that, all we had to do is pay for some repairs! Exciting, right? Three months before we wanted to have a car, we got it!


And now for the funny part...
We have "owned" a car now for 3 weeks. We have yet to drive it for more than 2 blocks and we recently figured out some of the more important stats! Like what, you ask? Oh well...we knew it was old and we knew it was a Toyota. That's all we knew for about the first week. Nick remembered it being red, Ali silver. We recently found out it is blue :) We also recently found out it is a 1995 Toyota Corona Saloon, which officially sounds like we own a Western bar and not a car! :) For the first week we "owned" it, Paul and the school maintenance man, Hans, took turns moving it around the VERY limited parking space available at school because our building (though big and fairly nice) only has 9 parking spots which are lotteried off each year (we are doubtful the only foreigners in the building could win that lottery!).
One day, a co-worker came in after school and said "Ali, your car is blocking me in. Can you move it?" To which I replied, "Oh really? Where is my car at? And what does it look like?" haha. I had to quickly run around school looking for who might have the keys, only to find out that Nick was given the keys as he was leaving school on his way to tutoring. So, I had to run home in the rain, grab the keys and ask my principal to help me with a little Taiwan maneuvering, so that my other co-worker could go home. Needless to say, Paul found us a parking spot the next day!!
Later this week, we will drive the car for the first time. Before then, we need to remember what parking spot number we are! :)

Oh, how we love being car owners!! :)

Hello...this is the Dave Ramsey show...

WE'RE DEBT FREE!!!!!!!! (insert loud cheers from radio noise machine here)

Unfortunately for Dave, we did not use Financial Peace University and therefore, he did not get paid for helping us. Instead, we followed the "Nali debt-free before Baby Su arrives" plan, which worked out great for us.

But no matter how we got to this point, we are now the proud, well-educated and on-the-road to savings Mr. and Mrs. Su. UCI, GCU and Sallie Mae will no longer be benefiting from our donations :)
(Disclaimer...I don't actually know how much we will be saving with a baby on the way...but at least baby won't charge interest!)

Team Su Gets Creative

So Nick and I are colleagues...in the most literal, direct sense of the word. I am the full time ELL teacher and he is the part time ELL teacher. We have a connecting door. Now...some folks voiced their concerns about this being a good idea or not, but we have never once questioned or regretted it. After all...with baby Su on the horizon, why not try to spend and cherish as much "us" time as possible and what better way to do that than to work together. This is literally a once in a lifetime thing.
The only thing that I ever worried about with this new TEAM SU, was/is our lack of creativity. Now, for those of you who know my husband, he is VERY creative, both musically and artistically. I, however, still have to label my stick figure drawings for my students! But even with Nick's creativity, we both lack the ability and desire to produce good bulletin boards.
To add to this worry, my former colleague, Candy, was AWESOME at bulletin boards...3-D, extremely intricately created works of art. I contemplated asking her to come and help us out, as she is still in Taiwan, but thought I would be imposing too much!
So...at the beginning of October, Reading month began and so our first creative bulletin board test was upon us. I thought of my best corny bulletin board slogan and we began brainstorming. There was no 3-D aspect to it, but Nick managed to put some awesome interactive elements in it.

Click here to see a video of our interactive reading month bulletin board!
THE WALL

The best part....

Our door won for the Specialist category!!! Our students (and us, of course) were extremely excited to win and receive the candy prize. They are already talking about winning the next competition! (On a side note, this was the first year ELL took the prize, but, it was also the first year they created a specialist category. Had that category been around in years past, our awesome 3-D boards would have been winning for several years already!)

All in all, we had fun doing it, and especially doing it together!! This won't be our last bulletin board together, so I hope that the creative juices keep flowing!