One of my students, Nicolas, is very good at car repair. In Mexico, he was an engineer. After he came to U.S., he took some auto mechanic classes. In addition to his educational background, he has a lot of hands-on experience working on the several cars his family of six has owned over the years.
Nicolas has been helping us fixing C.J.'s car recently. Nicolas has not only been fixing C.J.'s car, but also has been teaching C.J. how to fix cars by showing him from the step A to Z. He even took C.J. to Pick & Pull, a junkyard and showed him how to find used car parts in a very inexpensive way. How valuable lessons are they!
We just learned that changing break pads takes 20 minutes, not 2 hours; a set of break pads cost only $20-25, not $100. It enrages me to realize that we were paying $120-$150 for such a simple repair work in the past. Knowledge certainly is the power!
C.J. is very exicited about this new learning opportunity. And it feels great to know that we are gaining control over this quite expensive area of our life called car maintenance.
