Community Day -5/4/10

Our state government cut a big chunk of education expenses; therefore, many of our school district's teachers received pink slips, and the class size will be increased for the next school year.

"Their Future is Now(TFIN)" is a partnership between the community, the Cupertino Educational Endowment Foundation, and the Cupertino Union School District to raise $3 million by 5/15 to keep all the teachers and keep the same class sizes.

Yesterday (5/4) was community day, and many restaurants, retail or service would donate 5 to 50% of the daily sales to the TFIN, so the school encouraged us to shop and to dine in the participating restaurants yesterday. Stephen got his haircut in one of the particpating store after work, and we went out for dinner. We tried TGI Friday first because many Ha and Hee's classmates would be there. The wait was too long. We saw Hee's teacher there, but according to Stephen, “人實在太多，空氣比高山上還稀薄”， and he started coughing hard when he entered the room, so we tried "Elephant Bar" which would also donate 20% of the sales to TFIN. On the street, we saw many people outside on the lawn waiting for the seats, and we knew that it would be a long wait, too. Then, we tried Fresh Choice, which is also nearby. On the parking lot,when we looked through the restaurant window, we saw a long waiting line as well, but at least, the line was inside the restaurant, so we decided to settle down because we believed that the rest of 30+ participating restaurants would be the same thing, and we were too hungry to go to another restaurant.

By the time we got the table, it's 8pm, and the long line was still forming until about 8:40pm. We left the restaurant at 9pm. On our way home, we drove through few other participating restaurants, and they were all still packed, and some of them still had waiting line. It's really the power of the community!