Weekend Assignment

The biggest assignment, and most important one for the weekend, was to visit a competitor Community and report the findings. Our instructor assigned a Community based on where we would like to go over the weekend. We thought we would like to go to Salem since it is on the way to a casino we visited while we were working in Lincoln City. Since it was the weekend and my birthday, why not give it a shot.

We got an early start following breakfast so we could be at the Community by 10 AM -  about 45 miles from us. The Community was The Springs at Sunnyview and is an Independent Living Community similar to the one where we are training. The first thing we noticed was that the Community was not as nice from the outside. When we entered the building, we were not greeted by anyone and had to go into the office to get the attention of someone to help us. They finally had the Marketing person greet us and she sat us down in her office to ask questions.

We played the role of a couple looking for a facility for ourselves. We had a daughter who we were visiting in Tualatin and she told us about this Community and suggested we visit before leaving for our home in AZ tomorrow (today). It was our first look at this type of living and we wanted to start looking early in our lives.

She bought our story and proceeded to spend about 2 hours with us, showing the Community to us and showing apartments and 1 cottage that may be of interest. Of course, our goal was to find out as much as we could about the Community and how it compares with ours. Josie and I were very impressed by the Community and, for the most part, offers all the same amenities and benefits that ours offers. The residents we met during the tour were all very happy and friendly. We felt like we achieved our goal and got answers to almost all the questions we had. Today we will write up our findings and report them to our instructor on Monday AM.

We left to go to the Spirit Mountain Casino which was 25 miles west of our location in Salem. We were there for probably 3 hours and won a few small pots, but nothing worth mentioning. It was a fun way to spend part of my birthday and we had dinner at the restaurant there to use up the points we had accumulated on our Spirit Mountain Club Card.

We stopped again in Salem on the way home at the Salem Center, which is a nice mall in the center of town. We escaped without making any purchases which is a rare occasion.

It was home by 8 PM last night and we awoke to a trace of snow on the ground and very cold temps:

We're glad we did the Commmunity assignment yesterday and we have the day today to wrap up the rest of our homework assignments and get to our Community by 7 PM to begin our turn for the overnight emergency call duty...