CJ and Jenn in Jose Olé

If you love sushi and are big eaters like me and Shane then you understand the frustration of having to pay a ton of money for good sushi but then you get really frustrated because you're not even close to full. $10.00 for a roll? You've gotta be kidding!

We did some research on a website that I've begun to use down here to help pick a restaurant to go to or something to do, yelp.com. I was looking for a sushi place and found The Sushi Factory. It had good ratings but I was nervous because it advertised "All You Can Eat Sushi". If you've ever been to a buffet that served sushi you know it sucked and your stomach still turns just thinking about it. Well we decided to try it out. It was awesome! It costs $26 a person (kinda pricey but if you eat three rolls you're more than good and it comes with miso soup and a gross salad!) Well the first time we went we ate over 120 pieces of sushi between four of us. It was me, Shane, Jennifer and Shane's Jennifer ("J-Ra" for Jennifer Ramierez or "No name" as I've begun to call her because she has no middle name... it's a long story) so you know Shane and I ate probably 50 pieces each. To boot, the sushi was awesome! They had baked sushi and really spicy tuna rolls. We've been there three times since we found it out and last Tuesday we went with our San Jose friends; Rula, Kalid and his girlfriend Karen.

I guess we should introduce you all to our San Jose friend, Rula. I met her when I was in a training the first week I started working in the SJUSD. It was a training for the ELA curriculum they use. It was fun but wierd because I didn't know anyone. Rula was at my 5th grade table. She teaches in Campbell (a nice area to teach... very wealthy compared to my downtown school). It's her first year teaching and she is my age so we started talking and she was trying to direct me to a "teacher store" and finally discovered that I was new here. She didn't even know me and she invited me to a music and art event that a friend of hers was putting on at the San Jose Art Museum. It was fun and ever since then she's been showing us around SJ and we've become quite good friends. Every Sunday she comes over for "family dinner" at our place and Jennifer gets all fancy with her cooking.

A little about Rula- she is Lebanese but wa born here. Her parents are from Lebanon and her mom still has a very heavy accent. The first time we met her parents they became our SJ mom and dad. Her dad is a top car salesman down here and is really a nice guy. Since they are Arab it has really taught us a lot being their friends. Her dad's name is Muhammad but being a car salesman he goes by "Andy" to keep from running into prejudices. It's pretty interesting. Kalid is Rula's brother and he is a manager of car salesmen. He's still ever the salesman, when we were out for sushi he was "selling" his girlfriend into eating 3 more pieces of sushi, it was hilarious! He's a really fun guy to be around- really loud and obnoxious. Rula has a sister who lives in the Lake Stevens area of Washington so hopefuly we'll bring her up with us at some point.

Rula is seriously the nicest person I've ever met. I would NEVER do all the things she did for us when she found out we were new here and knew no one, but then again I'm a bit of a jerk!