Time Goes By When You're Having Fun

Hello Everyone!

The first fish I ever caught 

It's almost the end of summer everyone. Most of the Save the Harbor Staff and I are about to head back to school and I just want to think about all the things I did this summer. Well, first of all, before this summer, I didn't know how to do most of the things that I know how to do now. At the beginning of the summer, I didn't know how to fish and now I can teach what I learned to my family and friends who also don't know how to fish. I can also tell the difference between a female and a male crab by just looking at their stomachs. Now lets talk about the sites I worked at. At the beginning of the summer, I wanted to be put at the Children's Museum so bad, but when I got assigned to Piers, I was a little sour about it. Now I think Piers is one of the best sites to work at. It was so fun working there with the kids and the staff and when I was assigned to work at a different site for a day, I would have had as much fun as I would at Piers. This is my first summer working at with Save the Harbor/ Save the Bay and I learned so much and met some great people through the way and I hope to return next year to learn something new and even meet some more great people. So to end my last blog post of the year, I would like to say thank you for the most exciting and probably the best summer I have ever had.

The Piers Park Bear Crawl Race

On Basil's Boat for the fishing tournament 

Exploring Lovell's Island on Staff Day

Good Bye Pier's Park

What a summer! To everyone's that been keeping up with my posts, these past weeks were awesome! I'm so thankful for the opportunity to have been fishing with kids, the other staff and the captains who lent their boats! Having access to the various equipment from the office made work awesome! I miss the kids already and as I am sitting at home on my sofa writing my final blog post I can see the fun adventures I had this entire summer whenever my eyes close! This job in summary consisted of a lot of fishing, finding life (insects, crustaceans, fish, and any other moving creatures) around the area, running around with children in various games (i.e. Capture the Flag, Sharks & Minnows, Drip-drip-drench, Tag, and randomly being chased), getting soaked by sprinklers, Jeopardy, learning about sea life, kayaking, beach activities, arts & crafts (drawing and fish printing) and lastly having a blast with the kids. This is my last blog post, I hope all of you that have read my posts up until now have had an amazing summer as well! 

I want to thank Amy Gaylord for looking at my e-mail, Sandra Chen for telling me about this opportunity, Bruce Berman for accepting me into this program and Patty for leading the whole Save the Harbor and Save the Bay site in Boston! The staff at Pier's park were fun individuals who worked hard to make not only their day spectacular, but the kids' days as well! The Pier's Park team who consisted of people who were here from the beginning, to folks that came either one day or a few were really all a great help, a lot of fun, creative and responsible individuals! Shout outs to Amanda for being a mother goose to some of the kids, Rusenny for being their day one and growing as an  individual, Sam who came only the last few days, but her presence felt like she was at our site all summer, Christian a.k.a. Pablo the rookie Capture the Flag score breaker, Ary the realest m.v.p. making sure that the kids were listening, and Sean the story teller, blue berry and banana every day man, always had something educational to teach the kids and very much a core person that held all the L.H.E.'s and J.P.A.'s together to co-function as a strong unit and the list could go on! Ever-fi was educational and I also want to give thanks to John Hancock for the MLK scholars programs, they did a remarkable job running their annual program for their 4th year I believe! I hope that the new folks who join S.T.H./ S.T.B. in the future have at the minimum as much fun as I did!

Raymond Chai

Another unforgettable summer...

Remember how I mentioned in one of my blogs that hopefully by the end of summer at Piers Park we will catch a fish? Well... We did! Ironically, it happened on the very last day of camp! Also, It wasn't just no ordinary fish, but it was a squid! Which has never been caught here before. What a great memory, definitely one that will stick with me and the kids for a very longtime.

"I caught a squid!"

Its crazy and sad to realize that this summer is actually coming to an end and to know that this will be my last blog. Honestly, Save the Harbor Save the Bay has made another unforgettable summer for me. This summer, I got to met a group of funny, awesome, and amazing people. I also got a chance to grow many close friendships with the kids that will be apart of my memory. I will remember having tons of fun with the kids and my team playing a competitive game of capture the flag, fishing and crabbing, and of course all the laughs we had together. I had a fantastic summer and hopefully you all did too.

Besides all the fun, I also learned many things and developed many skills from working here, and most definitely will be using them in the future. Which makes me very grateful for having the honor and opportunity to be able to work for Save the Harbor Save the bay.
Very soon, I will be heading to college and there will be many changes in my life. I don't know what path college will take me and where it will lead me to. Whatever happens, I hope I will see you guys again someday. Till then, I wish you all the best and good luck.


Day one: When we all met each other for the first time.

Farewell,
I miss you guys already!
Nhu




As The Summer Comes To An End

This has been an amazing second year working with Save the Harbor and it's unfortunate that it's coming to an end. This summer I had the opportunity to experience many new things that I did not do last year. This year was really different from last year, but it was a good type of different. This year I feel that the JPA's were all closer than we were last year. This year I had the opportunity to make a lot of great new friends like Esmeralda, my brother Andy, Somtoo, Carlos, Edward and Abdi. These were the people that I had a change to work with and we became close after a couple of hours of work. I also caught my first fish ever which was really cool because I brought it home and we had the fish for dinner and it was the best fish I've ever had. One of the coolest changes this year was having Sam around to lend some of his art talents to us. I had an awesome time learning how to make fishing prints and the fish mural that we mad was just amazing.

The Squad

Fish Printing With Sam

The Fishing Tournament

It is really hard saying goodbye to not just the staff but saying bye to the kids. I really enjoy working with these kids even though at times it maybe be tough. You can learn a lot from the kids if you pay attention closely to what they say and do. They are all intelligent kids and when a challenge is posted in front of them they always find a way to solve the problem and that's really impressive. These kids that I've been working with for the last two years have really grown on me and it really stinks that I won't be seeing them for a long time. To all the staff it was really great working with all you guys, I had a terrific summer and I'm really looking forward to carving up with some of you guys to hear about how your year is going. To Bruce, Patty and Bridget thank you for an amazing summer.

Jazeel Mendes and this is the me signing out- Chao