YEES Alumni

Megan is attending Yokota East Elementary School, the same school I went to as a kid. It's gotten bigger with the addition of two classroom buildings, two huge playgrounds and a lunchroom (when I was a kid there was no cafeteria, everyone walked home for lunch every day) but the rest is still exactly the same. Although now their mascot is a panda; when I was a kid our mascot was our principal's little weiner dog, East, who came to school every day and followed our prinicpal, Mr. Lenz everywhere he went. On a side note, for some reason I vividly remember learning to spell the word PRINCIPAL while in the 2nd grade at YEES. I missed it on a spelling test and my teacher made me stay after school until I figured out how to spell it. In a moment of pure genius I asked to go to the office to call my mom and tell her I'd be late getting home; when I got her on the phone she told me how to spell PRINCIPAL and I raced back to class to correct my test. That memory just popped into my head! I literally hadn't thought about it in 30 years! Anyway, at Christmas every student got their picture taken with East, the weennie dog, to put in the Xmas cards we made for our parents. I still have mine :)


Now, every Friday at YEES (now renamed Mendel Elementary School, in honor of Joan Mendel, a teacher at the school for over 30 years, who recently passed away) is Spirit Day and the kids wear their school T-shirts; today Megan wore MY 30 year old YEES school T-shirt. It was pretty cool. I'm so thankful that my kids are getting the same great opportunity that I had to grow up here!