Resettleus Half days at school due to funding crisis By Karina Rook Oh dear, parent-teacher conferences start on Monday. What’s amazing is that the kids get 3 days next week as half days to accommodate this activity. Yep, the school district can’t afford to pay the teachers to stay back after class and do the parent-teacher interviews
Resettleus Still can't get tipping right in Silicon Valley By Karina Rook You eat in a restaurant, you always tip – I’m clear on that one. Pretty similar to back home in Australia, but it’s the subtleties I’m not getting. A friend and I recently ate in a bakery where we paid at the register and had
Resettleus Permanent police presence with Officer Andre By Karina Rook My kid’s Middle School has a police officer permanently stationed at the school. He has his own car park too – the best one right in front of the school office. The school has 1,100 students covering grades 6, 7 and 8. They are not violent,
Resettleus Why can't I get my usual tablets here? By Karina Rook I need to take 5mg Folic Acid tablets daily, but in the US I can only buy 1mg tablets. The general consensus from my local pharmacist and the two doctors I consulted is that I’ll just have to take 5 tablets instead of the one. Really?
Resettleus Hop to it. Task Rabbit, a San Francisco company By Karina Rook I run errands for people for money. I am a TaskRabbit. TaskRabbit is an online service for freelancers who bid on completing tasks for people. Many of these tasks are in your local area, but some are virtual tasks too, with clients anywhere in the world. Anyone
Resettleus We call it Fall not Autumn By Karina Rook The feeling of Fall is everywhere, oranges and browns, cute decorations on porches, harvest-time flags and pumpkin patches along the roadside. Most townships have a stall selling pumpkins for decorating for Fall, Thanksgiving and Halloween. As you drive down the main road you see they have erected
Resettleus Getting credit history in Silicon Valley By Karina Rook When you rent a house in the Silicon Valley, your application needs to include a credit report. This is a document issued by a credit agency that looks up your public records using your Social Security Number (SSN) and assesses your repayment history on bills, store cards
Resettleus Finding your community in Silicon Valley By Karina Rook There’s an interesting new social network called Nextdoor that recently launched in our area – it’s all about getting to know your neighbors. There are defined neighborhoods which you can join once you verify your address, and you can view a map of the area labeling
Resettleus Leaf blowers constantly buzzing By Karina Rook Boy they love their leaf blowers in California – I hear them all day long. The Mexican gardeners look after everyone’s gardens in our neighborhood. I don’t how much they charge as our landlord pays for them to look after our place. They arrive in a
Resettleus The best toy ever... the Ezy Roller By Karina Rook Thanks to a generous ‘bon voyage’ gift from my son’s grandparents, he bought the best toy ever soon after we arrived in California. The EzyRoller is like to a self-propelling go-kart which uses a swiveling leg motion to move forwards. It rolls beautifully down hills and
Resettleus Recycling and reusing made easy in Silicon Valley By Karina Rook I am pretty darn impressed. I had an SUV full to the top with furniture packaging and I managed to make sure none of it ended up in landfill. In Australia this would involve driving to the rubbish tip and recycling what was possible, and then having
Resettleus Rent Vs Buy in Silicon Valley By Karina Rook This is a debate we’re having at the moment, well, more like a friendly discussion to help us decide what to do for housing here on the Peninsula. We arrived seven months ago when renting was the only logical choice due to time factors, financial factors
Resettleus Navigating the US medical system By Karina Rook We have private health insurance in California through a salary package, so already I knew we would be ‘taken care of’. I learned this through watching years of Grey’s Anatomy on TV, where the poor un-insured people get slow medical help, if any. Before moving to
Resettleus I just want bread that isn't sweet By Karina Rook Shopping for loaves of bread has been a very frustrating task due to the fact that most US bread has a sweet taste. Apparently this is because sugar/high fructose corn syrup is used as a preservative in the bread, rather than the chemical preservatives we are
