to all the ladies in the place with style and grace... (Jen)

Labor Day has arrived, and it is a very fitting break between my summer and fall. I have spent the summer doing a number of things, none of them particularly interesting, but I'll tell you all anyway...

I did my first really spontaneous thing ever - a week or so after graduation I bought a plane ticket to Chile and three days later I was on my way to Valpo. It was a terrific trip. I met my friend Valentina's fat (and very beautiful) five-month-old son, Leon, I bought late-night empanadas with some Midd Kids, spent time with the angelic (demonic) children at Colegio Jorge Williams, and made it back to eveyone's favorite sketch-tastic bar, el Proa.


After a few days of recovering from my adventure I began my month-long stint as a camp counselor. We hosted about one hundred international high schoolers and did just about every free activity that Boston has to offer. Highlights: my first visit to the ICA (Shepard Fairey exhibit was great) and the Beach Boys concert. Not-highlights: 3 students getting caught shoplifting at the mall, chicken nuggets for every meal, the camp director.

During August I temped at the Center For Family Connections - a non-profit organization founded by my aunt that provides therapy, training, education, and advocacy to children, families, and professionals touched by adoption, foster care, and other complex blended families. It's an awesome place to work, but I was doing excrutiating things, like scanning bazillions of articles and cataloging old conference videos on VHS.

Tomorrow I start my job at Tenacity, a non-profit that provides "academic, athletic and life skills development programs to Boston youth." I will be an AmeriCorps member, and I will primarily be working with the After School Excellence Program, which focuses on literacy and mentoring, and tennis! (Luckily, it is not likely that I will ever actually have to play tennis, but I may try sometime and use it as a learning experience.) There are a total of 18 AmeriCorps members working for Tenacity, so I'm excited to get to know a good group of people. After this week we are assigned a site (one of five) around Boston where the programs actually take place. We will work with kids from two or three different middle schools at each site. This is about as much as I actually know right now, so I'll save the rest for later.

If any of you are in Boston, please let me know. I am in need of some new faces!


love, Jen