inside & out

written 6/30/06-for the past couple weeks i worked with the camp in addition to the office. I spent half the day in each building. The stint as temp registrar, kevin/camp assistant, and receptionist gave a good balance to the day. I enjoy the interaction with parents, kids, staff and faculty, even the odd jobs like holding babies while parents use the restroom and entertaining kids with tardy pick ups. it's nice to see the human aspect of planning, and budgets. being at the front of the school also promises so much free food! haha like the strawberry bundle bouquet from a parent today.

fais has their amusez-vous summer camp running alongside with the cais camp. i secretly envy the kids' ability to sing, rhyme and absorb everything french. little fais kids put me to shame when they order at tartine, while i settle for the self consciously anglo greeting of "good morning" every day.

Kid Chow

I've been eating "Kid Chow" for lunch this week(cause kids don't show up and there are extras). I love it. It's a web based lunch delivery service that provides personalized and nutritious brown bag lunches to bay area schools. According to the website, they use...
fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms, all natural peanut butter, organic jams, hormone-free and organic milk, cage-free eggs and chickens and all natural deli products. We strive to use many organic ingredients and we offer foods that are nitrate and trans-fatty acid free.
It's healthier than the brioche or sandwhich I would normally grab from Tartines.

the brash and the beautiful

It's become a tradition of sorts for my mom and I to go to World Arts Fest's Ethnic Dance Festival every year. I went to the Spirit segment of the Festival this Saturday. The show was narrated by Marc Bamuthi Joseph who works with youth speaks. He kept the theme of spirit continuous and eased transitions, all through spoken word and movement. It worked for me. I also liked that more dance groups opted for live music from the stage this year.

I was also at the Festival to support CAIS's dance troupe, the only all kids dance group to be selected to perform this year. They performed a Mongolian piece called Girls on the Grassland. I was impressed. I was expecting a kid's dance that would get major cute points from the audience, but they delievered a professional, and not to mention technically tight piece. They have some really strong dancers amoung their ranks. The group definately held their own against the adult performers. Zhoa AiPing laushir (haha, my roomate during the Beijing Peking Opera trip) did an amazing job with the choreography, her teaching experience at the Beijing Dance Academy really showed.
Some other favorites were a solo by Parna Basu and Ballet Folklorica Alma de Mexico's big finish ending with a 14 piece live band.

Sedaris

My supervisor gave me David Sedaris' memoir,Naked today. I'm so excited to start it! I had to pace myself through Me Talk Pretty One Day, because I didn't want it to end, it was so good.

A- line skirts in SF summertime

The past couple days have been beautiful in San Francisco. I don't remember summer ever being this plesant. Warm weather always prompts major skirt wearing action, but A-line skirts only seem to work in theory. It was spare the air day today so I took public transportation and did much walking around downtown and hayes valley as usual. Sudden gusts of SF wind came out of nowhere and caused much difficulty. I think I'll stick to pencil skirts from now on.

The page st. office has also made a transition into summer mode. Yoga balls have made their entrance into the office replacing the traditional swivel chair and Ms. Molly the art teacher has redecorated the walls with tribal kiddie art.

first 24 days in office

i've spent the last couple weeks working in the CAIS development and business office. i spend most of my time event planning, designing smaller projects and attending various meetings, plus the inevitable grunt work of interning( yay filing!). the annual fund announcement i've been working on has finally been completed and was sent out today! it was my first time preparing a design for output to a high load printing company and working on a project without guidance. i ran into some conflict from the messaging to technicals. the pantone colors shifted from the review version yellow to a murky greenish mustard, but everything else turned out ok. i still have much to learn and some new concerns i want discussed in my d3 class next semester regarding ethics, copywriting and such.

i've also been cold calling in mandarin as part of the job, which is truly testing my speaking ability in the language. it's good practice. growing up with immersion model at CAIS allows me to think directly in mandarin as i speak, but i notice that i'm starting to translate from english into chinese for certain phrases. i was originally planning to take the adv. language seminar placement next semester as recommended by my EALC counselor, but now i might take mandarin 4 to review instead, seeing as there has been a four year span of not really utilizing the language.

fabirthday

so tomorrow is father's day and ba's birthday rolled into one. i find myslef continually outdone by my younger self. it wasn't until recently that i realized hallway installation art isn't the norm for doting on parents.

ma will always be better at basketball