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
