LESS THAN TWO WEEKS!
TAF 2010: Love Out Loud
*** UPDATE: Regular registration deadline is now July 10, 2010! Register Now >> ***
Hello TAF Family! It’s almost July which means the countdown to TAF 2010: “Love Out Loud” is well underway — and the deadline for regular registration is right around the corner! We are very excited for this year’s theme of Communication and look forward to learning and developing our skills together on how to communicate with oneself, friends, family, and the community at large — and all the different ways we can do so with the technologies of today.
We hope the “Love Out Loud” theme name helps us communicate our hopes for everyone to not hesitate in openly expressing themselves at TAF — and to use this year, like we strive for every year, as an opportunity to practice opening our hearts to our own eyes and share our experiences with each other. Only louder, because we want to bring to the world a new meaning to the term “LOL” 🙂
This year is also special because we will be celebrating TAF’s 30th birthday! Join us in celebrating how TAF has grown and changed over the past 30 years — but shhhh! It’s a surprise, so you will have to come see for yourself what we have planned for everyone. And if you can’t join us, make sure to stay tuned to our blog for daily updates and recaps on the week’s activities!
See you very soon! And don’t forget to LOL!
tafLabs 2010 update: another year of “Realizing Awesome”
As we look forward to another year of TAF, we will also be entering our second year of the tafLabs program, headed up by program directors Jon Lee and Kevin Yau! You may remember last year’s amazing slideshow among other fun projects by the tafLabs team members, and this year we look forward to a growing tafLabs family by introducing a new function and welcoming back a former TAFer — Andrea Hong as our Marketing Director!
You may be asking yourself: “What does this mean for TAF and for me?” For starters, it means that as an organization, TAF is continuing on its way to empowering everyone in our family to help us grow and fulfill our mission and vision through more and more awesome projects. If you would like to be part of action in helping TAF grow — and learning from each other in the process — then tell us what you can see yourself doing to help and/or what projects you hope we can accomplish in the near future!
Tell us why you want to join tafLabs — fill out this form by July 1, 2010: http://tinyurl.com/taflabs2010
TAF 2010: Save the Date!
Photos from TAF 2009 courtesy of Eddie Huang
TAF 2010 is already right around the corner! Can you smell the Manchester halls and taste the soft-serve ice cream? Do you remember your favorite ice breaker games? How about the name of your big or little ‘sib’? If you need help jogging your memory, just check out the daily logs from TAF 2009 in the posts below!
It’s never too late (or early) to start thinking about all the laughter and memories ahead of us, so save these dates in your calendar now:
TAF 2010: July 25 – August 1
Whether this will be your first time at TAF — or second, third, fourth or more — we all look forward to another year of profound and unique experiences! Join us in celebrating our dual heritage as Taiwanese Americans and building lifelong friendships from around the nation! Invite your relatives and your friends — the more, the merrier as always!
Online registration will be available soon, so be sure to check back here again!
In the meantime, 2010 Staff Applications are now available, so if you are interested in applying to be a Youth coordinator (for Youth campers only) or a counselor for Juniors, Junior High, or Youth, please fill out the form by May 15, 2010.
We will be back with more updates — but for now, this is your “2010 TAF Team” saying “see you soon!” and signing off for now:
– Juniors Program Directors: Emmeline Kuo and Elizabeth Wang
– Junior High Program Directors: Howard Chen and Michelle Hsu
– Youth Program Directors: Jessica Fu and Ming Young
– tafLabs Program Directors: Jon Lee and Kevin Yau
– Executive Director: Karen Lin
Behind the Scenes: TAF Board Retreat
TAF board members and PDs are meeting in Chicago this weekend to talk about the future and direction of TAF!
Right now, PDs are giving program presentations to the board!
Also, there was a (near) unanimous on an issue very important to the board – Chicago-style stuffed pizza for lunch!
2010 Census Write in “Taiwanese” PSA is live!
From the folks involved with tafLabs and tafMedia – the 2010 US Census Write in “Taiwanese” Public Service Announcement is now live!
Check it out here: http://taiwaneseamerican.org/census2010
Remember! Be counted, be recognized! Tell everyone you know (Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese alike) and especially your parents! Look for the census forms in the mail this month.
TAF New Years 2010!
TAFers celebrated the new year Saturday night with the annual TAF New Years get together. We’ll have photos and stories to share soon..stay tuned! (Oh were such teases aren’t we?)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Warm wishes of family and friendship on this autumnal celebration of thanks. We hope you get to spend the day surrounded by loved ones, watching or playing football, and stuffing your face with turkey, sweet potatoes (little Taiwans!), and whatever miscellaneous Asian delights your parents and relatives add to the mix.
Let us know what you did! Maybe you got to feast with fellow TAFers, and if you did, send us photos! We’ll show them here. The first picture came in our inbox just now all the way from London, England!
Cheers mates! Happy Thanksgiving!
Chicago chapter kickoff!
If you haven’t heard yet, TAF has launched its newest program: TAF Chicago! The Chicago chapter’s goal is to provide a year-round learning/laughing/loving resource to TAFers and the surrounding community. We know that nothing could ever replace TAF’s summer session, but we hope that our meetings will help stem the post-TAF blues.
At TAF Chicago, we’ll learn about the four rotating themes of TAF with a focus on everyday issues of school, social life, current events, and pop culture. Eventually, we hope that the program will be run by the participants as well as coordinators; all TAFers (and parents) are welcome to lead workshops or speaker sessions.
TAF Chicago kicked off this past Saturday with what else?: a game of ninja. Twenty participants and a handful of coordinators engaged in an epic ninja battle, including two brand-new TAFers! Afterwards, the chapter moved onto speaker session, where we recapped some of the main points in Roger Lin and Bum Kim’s speaker sessions from TAF 2009.
As for current events, we talked about the two Asian-American journalists in North Korea, Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Their story teaches us that it’s impossible to judge what’s right and wrong without the full story. In other news, we discussed the Kanye West/Taylor Swift situation. To connect this to other events, we talked about Rep. Joe Wilson interrupting President Obama during his Congressional address. In each situation, is it right or wrong to interrupt someone, even when the thing you interrupt is strongly against your own beliefs?
Afterwards, ‘workshops’ were held– basically, everyone crowded outside to play in the late-afternoon sun. We threw around footballs, frisbees, played a game of kickball, and just laid in the grass with our fellow TAFers. Dinner was served, then it was onto our after-program activity– mini golfing!
All in all, it was a successful event! We can’t wait to see more of you at next month’s meeting, which will be held (tentatively) on October 24. Don’t hesitate to email TAFChicago@gmail.com with questions, suggestions and pictures. Details for next month will be released in a week or so.
THANKS FOR COMING 🙂
-With TAFLove,
your Chicago chapter staff
Photos courtesy of Dan Lu. Find more on Facebook!