My First Spanish Lesson in Beautiful San Diego

Way back in the summer of 1967, my first impression of San Diego was at 3:00 am dead tired and fresh off the Wisconsin farm. As a 19-year-old Marine recruit, I had landed in the hands of screaming drill instructors at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot to begin basic training. I remember the constant noise of airplanes flying over the base and small San Diego in the nearby hillside. The tiny skyline and the surrounding bay were beautiful and serene 50 years ago.

There are many things I learned from training with other recruits from all walks of life and from all over the country. I also got a great lesson about the colorful Spanish and Mexican cultural traditions and language, my first Spanish word, chula. My Mexican-American drill instructor got wind of my last name, Schullo, and translated it into Spanish and dubbed me “private beautiful” from then on. Thus, my introduction to San Diego and the colorful and diverse California culture began.

Since that 1967 “Private Beautiful” summer, I have visited San Diego many times over the decades, and it took me a while to rid of those initial Marine Corps experience.

View of downtown San Diego from Coronado Island

 

The La Jolla Beach

I have been to the usual tourist world-class attractions and recommend all listed here:

• San Diego Zoo,
• Beautiful Balboa Park,
• WWII USS Midway carrier tour,
• Seaport Village,
• Old Town San Diego,
• Tajuana,
• Coronado Island and the world-famous Coronado Hotel,
• La Jolla and the baby seal beach,
• And one of my favorites sites the animals roam free on an 1800-acre reserve. The San Diego Safari Park zoo is located north of the city in the San beautiful Pasqual Valley, near Escondido.
• In the past, I visited the Marine Corps Recruit Depot visitors center and museum. On a Sunday afternoon, I watched the recruits marching in cadence, following the drill instructor’s orders. Nothing much has changed except their uniforms went from green in my days to camouflaged today.

The above attractions have been written and documented thousands of times. But for me, one of my retirement activities as with all retiree is to visit the world. What is so interesting is the fact that I have lived in Los Angeles all of my 50 years of adult life and have only been to San Diego a few times.

Until this weekend, I stayed in San Diego hotels those few times I have visited this great American city. For the first time, I stayed in a condo, with Georgiana’s friend. It is in one of the many pristine hills just minutes from downtown and the wealthiest and most famous community in the world, La Jolla. I did not know there were so many hills just minutes away from downtown San Diego. The lesson here is that it’s great that I can roam the world on a whim, but I also can immensely enjoy what is in my backyard, literally.

San Clemente State Beach

On our way home, we stopped at San Clemente. Those of you old enough to remember might recall President Tricky Dicky (Richard Nixon) had his Western White House in San Clemente. The beach is beautiful with the occasional Metro Rail interruptions.

Enjoying the solitude and the ancient roaring sounds of the surf at San Clemente Beach

The last attraction beats all of the above tourists sits by a huge mark–desserts!

Who doesn’t love a good dessert?

San Diego has the best dessert specialty restaurants on Union and on 4th street. Below are just a few of the extraordinary desserts that Extraordinary Restuarant serves. If you are ever in San Diego, this is a must visit.

Addresses and Directions of the two Dessert Restaurants.

 

Steve’s Bio

Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. (UCLA ’96) taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 24 years and UCLA Extension teaching educational technology to student teachers. Steve wrote investment articles for the United Teacher-Los Angeles (UTLA) union newspaper for 13 years. He has been featured and quoted in many mainstream media articles about 403(b) plans, including the Los Angeles Times, NY Times, and U.S. News and World Report. He co-founded an investor self-help group 403bAware for teacher colleagues and wrote 7,500 posts in three investment forums since 1997. He testified at California State legislative hearings and honored with the “Unsung Hero” award by his teacher’s union for his retirement planning advocacy.

 For the last thirteen years, he serves as a volunteer on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee as a “Member-at-Large” and former co-chair. The committee contains collective bargaining reps from the unions and monitors the district’s tax-deferred retirement plans, 457b/403b, of 55,000 former and current LAUSD employees, worth $2.8 billion in total assets.

He started this blog in 2012 to help all PreK-12 public school educators nationwide, especially his Los Angeles Unified School District colleagues. He belongs to a small national group of 403(b) advocates (mostly teachers) who want to bring closer attention to the 403(b). During the last 25 years, 38 newspaper articles have been published and each one says the same thing, TSAs (Tax Sheltered Annuities) are terrible 403(b) plans and the salesperson gets the benefit from lucrative commissions and high costs. Nobody in educational leadership reads these articles NOR talk about the proper place for annuity products publically. We come together at 403bwise.com. Come on over if you want to join us so we can help our colleagues avoid these self-conflicted retirement plans, TSAs.