Month: March 2014

Friday 07-March-2014

Not much going on today. I had to report to work around 9:00. Barbara picked Katie and me up and dropped us off at the office. We packed turkey sandwiches and ate lunch there at the office. I haven’t had a diet coke since Sunday and at this point have no craving for one, which is nice. However, we discovered that there is a Burger King about 200 feet down the road from my office so hopefully I don’t get back into my #9 chicken sandwich habit that I had a few years ago.

Gigi, our realtor, is not very good about calling me. I always have to call her to find out what is going on. She always says, “Oh Kevin, I’m so glad you called me” and then proceeds to tell me the news she has. When I called her this morning, she told me that she presented the offer of $1350 to the owner and they wouldn’t even give a counter offer because the price was too low. I told her to come back with $1550 and to call me as soon as possible to let me know. Around 2:00 I hadn’t heard anything from Gigi so I gave her another call. “Oh Kevin, I’ve been out of the office and haven’t been able to check my email.” About two minutes later she called back excited and said that they would accept our original offer ($1700) and not put the condo up for sale. They also said if they decided to put the condo up for sale that they would accept the offer of $1550. Good enough for me. The only catch is we can’t move into the place until March 18th. Originally we were told that it would be available on March 10th. Our stay at the Sunshine Suites ends Monday morning, the 10th.

My boss has offered to let us stay with her, but I’m a little reluctant to take her up on the offer. When I told the Jamaican Ed. Psychs, otherwise known as my life coaches, they said I should call Gigi back and try and negotiate some reduced rate or place to stay at our condo. So, we are in waiting mode to see if Gigi can make anything work. I doubt that they will give us anything, but it is worth a try. I also called the local ham radio operator who has a big station and I believe a small one bedroom place at his shack. He already knew I was coming and the purpose of the call was to introduce myself and to nonchalantly tell him our situation. He was very nice but didn’t comment about our lodging situation. He called back later and I got really excited when I saw it was him calling, but he was just calling to invite me to their club meeting on Monday. Nigel, G3TXF, will also be at the club meeting. It will be nice to have a group of hams around the island, with many top contesters visiting the island throughout the year.

So it looks like the only viable option for the next 10 days is staying with my boss, Barbara. The days will go by quickly, but my only concern is if any long lasting repercussions develop from our stay with her.

Katie did a good job playing in the office with her doll and on her iPad all day Friday while I looked at the paper thin files on all of my students. A typical IEP for a student in Arkansas is around eleven pages long. The amount I will be responsible for here is one goal page. Therapy and paperwork here will be a walk in the park.

We are settling in and I think we will really have a good time, especially when Jennifer and Michael arrive. It will be great to greet them at the airport (hopefully I can get off, ). I’m going to rent a car Saturday morning for a few days until I can buy one and get it insured and registered. We are going to get Katie’s uniform Saturday morning and will also have to buy some black sneakers and black dress shoes for her to wear to school.

Thursday March 6, 2014

Barbara, the supervisor of the special education department, picked us up around 9:00 and we went to the Government Building for the Cayman Islands. All of the government offices are housed here. Sorta like if you took all of the government buildings in D.C. and put them into one five story building. I met the HR person and filled out a bunch of forms. I’m excited about the totally free medical, dental, and vision insurance for our entire family. I was feeling pretty good at this point. It seemed that the house and car were going to be taken care of today and I officially had a job.

Barbara took me to my office that I report to when I’m not going to schools. I met two of the educational psychologists, Denise and Stephanie, both of whom are from Jamaica. Denise drives a BMW has ultra short spikey highlighted hair and was dressed very stylishly. Denise and Stephanie immediately began grilling me on prices of the condo and car. During this time I received a call from Gigi, the real estate agent, informing me that the owner wanted to put the unit up for sale but still rent it out to us. This means that if the unit were to sell that we would be given 6 weeks notice and would have to move out. Denise, Stephanie, and Barbara all thought this was a good time for me to offer a lower amount. Up until this point I was feeling pretty good about the condo. It was $300 CI under our budget and had everything we wanted. However, my greedy side got the best of me and I followed Denise’s advice and offered $1350 (we originally offered $1700).
I’ve spoken to Gigi since the second offer was made, and she hasn’t heard back from the owner of the condo. We are preparing to go look at more places on Friday or Saturday if we don’t hear back on the condo. Haggling for price seems to be common, particularly in real estate, so I think if we don’t get the place that it will be more because of the availability date of the condo than the low ball price I threw out there.

So Barbara dropped me off at the office and asked Stephanie and Denise to take us home. Barbara had already said up front that there was no reason for me to put in a full day since there was so much that needed to be done. However, I think she intended for me to stay at the office for a couple of hours. The typical IEP file in the states will have reams of paper. While at the office I glanced into one file and there was a 3 or 4 page IEP and an evaluation. The paper work here will be a breeze. Anyway, after Barbara left, Stephanie and Denise immediately said you aren’t staying here, you need to take care of things that need to be done, and they promptly took us back to the hotel. I walked about a mile from our hotel to the LIME store. There are two major cell carries on Cayman, LIME and Digicell. I was able to get a plan with two lines and 200 minutes that we can use to call to the states for $62 CI, our numbers are 936-JENN and 936-N5DX. I think we will probably add a third line when Jennifer gets here so that Katie can also have a cell phone.

We toured Katie’s school and met the counselor there. Apparently prefects and houses are part of the British school system and not just something created by J.K. Rowling. Katie is in the Iguana house and we saw pictures of Year 5 and year 6 prefects around the school. The PTA sells the uniforms and they are only open on Saturday from 10:00 to 12:00. Hopefully they will be open and we can get Katie ready for school on Monday.

The day was pretty disappointing, mostly because of the condo situation. If we can’t find something similar to what we made an offer on then I’m going to look into a short term rental somewhere. The evening was really enjoyable though and made up for the day. Rochelle, a Canadian speech therapist that I will be working with, offered to take us out to dinner. Her husband Shane, who works at PWC accounting firm, also came along. We went to Camana Bay which is like a fancy Branson landing. Rochelle and Shane are laid back and super nice. They said that the $1700 amount for a 3 bedroom was right in the average range and they also thought that the low ball number wouldn’t scare the owner away.

Barbara has offered to let us stay with her, if we don’t find a place in time. Rochelle and Shane are leaving for Calgary on Wednesday and they offered to let us stay in their place while they are gone. I’m supposed to go into work on Friday all day, but I’ve already hinted to Barbara that we may have to go look at more places with the realtor in the afternoon on Friday.

ZF2DX has now gone QRT (meaning I’m off the air). I removed the window screen Monday when we arrived in order to fish my antenna out the window. This afternoon I went to open the window and noticed that the screen was back on the window. Then I went to open the window and it wouldn’t budge. Hotel maintenance installed a bracket that was bolted to the window and the frame around the

window that prevented me from sliding the window up. I could unscrew the bracket and push the antenna out the window, but I think this was the nice way of the hotel telling me to stop playing radio