Saul, Julie and Keoko

I had an appointment to get Saul's oil changed today. (Saul is my car's name. It's an old man name and I think my car is creeping to old man status pretty quickly so it fits him nicely) This oil change was supposed to happen 2 months and 1000 miles ago...oops! I've been a little preoccupied lately, anyway, I got up in plenty of time, took a shower, barely got ready but still ended up leaving late. How does this happen? When I was in high school I was impeccable at being on time to EVERYTHING. In this last 6 months to a year I've become horrible at being on time. Maybe my late-for-everything-friends finally rubbed off on me. Ugh.

Looking for a job...

is very possibly the worst experience in the world. I got an email from a principal yesterday wanting to set up an interview. Sure sounds great. I email back saying any time is great. She emails me "How about 10am on Friday?" I again say sure sounds great. She emails me back later saying wait that doesn't work, "How about in between 2:20 and 3pm?" I email back "Does 2:30 work?" Still no response. I'm showing up at 2:30. End of story. On another note, I heard from a professor that an elementary in Salt Lake was looking for a 1st grade teacher and wanted a Westminster grad. The professor said to call the principal, mention that I graduated from Westminster, was interested in the job and that the professor had told me about it. Easy enough. I tried to talk to the principal but I had to get through Maggie, the secretary. I think Maggie secretly wants to be a bouncer at a club and I'm not wearing a short enough skirt or slipping her a 20. So I just faxed my resume like Maggie said. We'll see what happens.

Book # 8: When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park

The first thing I noticed about this book was how similar it was to A Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi. This story is told from two perspectives--Sun-hee and Tae-yul. Sun-hee and Tae-yul are sister and brother. They alternate as narrators of separate chapters, and many times they both provide individual views of the same events. The book follows their experiences living in Korea as it is occupied by Japan during WWII. The novel provides accurate information about the war. Some chapters were dry and boring and I found myself skipping over a lot while I was completely engrossed by other chapters. I don't think I would give this book to anyone younger than 5th grade primarily because the level is pretty high and it would probably become quite discouraging for younger readers. Also, the content may be a bit controversial for some students. I'm giving this book 3 stars. If you're really interested in this subject, this is a good book, but there are better ones out there.

"You burn the paper but not the words. You silence the words but not the thoughts. You kill the thoughts only if you kill the man. And you will find that his thoughts rise again in the minds of others--twice as strong as before!" (p. 106)

"How could an alphabet--letters that didn't even mean anything by themselves--be important? But it was important. Our stories, our names, our alphabet. Even Uncle's newspaper. it was all about words. If words weren't important, they wouldn't try so hard to take them away." (p. 107)