TAF 2022
Oh, beloved TAF. Taiwanese American Foundation’s summer camp is where I spent a week of every summer from the time I was ten until I graduated college, and a few times since then as well. The last time I attended TAF was back in 2013, when I felt like I had gotten a lot out of TAF and given a lot back to the camp as well, and I felt fine with leaving it at that.
That is, until I got a message out of the blue from Shannon, the Executive Director, asking if I would consider being a speaker for the week. It was only a couple weeks before the camp would start, and I hadn’t thought about going to TAF at all. But lo and behold, I was free for the whole week, and I had some ideas for what my speaker sessions could be about. So we quickly planned our travels, and I brought along Alex (who had never heard of TAF until he met me) to show him this special little week that happens amidst the cornfields of Indiana.
TAF takes over the Manchester University campus for the whole week. We stay in dorms and eat cafeteria food and everything.
Alex came along with me to scout the different classrooms I could use for my speaker sessions.
A brief reunion with Christine as she dropped off her daughter to attend for the week! A funny experience for Christine, who used to be the Executive Director a decade ago, to be greeted by these new staffers who are explaining TAF to her and have no idea who she is.
Here’s a before and after of Christine’s daughter Lily, when I photographed her in a family session in Michigan twelve years ago, and today, at TAF! Also one of the fun little snapshots from the 90s that I brought with me.
And it officially begins! With a doom and gloom forecast from President and doctor Ho-Chie Tsai, who tells us that the new covid variant is out to get us all. But with their serial testing screenings approaching and during the week and with masks on indoors throughout the whole camp, we actually managed to get through this entire week, 400 campers and everything, with zero cases. Pretty remarkable.
Alex and I happened to be in the middle of run training for our upcoming 5k race… again, I hadn’t planned to go to the Midwest right before our race, but here we were! So we got up early every day to go run on the very nice, newly redone, Manchester track. Then we would go have breakfast, I would do my speaker session (and Alex participated), and then we would go work remotely for our day jobs the rest of the day.
TAF has four themes that rotate through the years: Identity, Ethics & Values, Communication, and Leadership. This was an ethics & values year, with the theme “Blueprint.” So I chose the theme “Building a Good Life” for my speaker sessions throughout the week. Before camp, I asked all my participants to send me a photo of what ‘a good life’ looked like to them. I also personalized some notebooks for each person, so this is what awaited them on day one.
Then, once speaker sessions were finished in the morning, we would go over to the conference room that we claimed as the “speakers’ lounge” to work for the rest of the day. Little Erin was always there with us since she’s too young to be in the programs at TAF but came along for the week with her dad, who’s on the board. She decided she needed to make herself a computer too. Very creative! I supplied the genuine Apple sticker to top it off, haha.
Tuesday! Back at it.
There are five different programs at TAF, four of which are sorted by age from elementary through high school, and then there is TAF Labs. I was one of the pioneering Labs members back in the day. It comprises everyone who either aged out of the other programs and already served as staff, or just don’t want to be staff and want to contribute in some other way to TAF. Named after Google Labs, the idea was that this program could be an incubator of sorts for different projects that would help participants to grow and also give back to TAF in some way. This also means that our Labs members ranged from people who had just finished high school to some parents who had kids at TAF for the week and who were volunteering as part of the medical team in case we ran into issues with covid and quarantining. It was really interesting to try and cover topics that would be interesting to this whole span of participants. Day one was vulnerability; day two, we worked on identifying our core values.
Brief excursion off the Manchester campus with Kev! This is a Labs tradition– pie. This unassuming furniture shop / bakery sells some very tasty pies.
I was partial to the cherry pie.
We even did laundry — for free — midweek. This is definitely not the TAF experience I’ve had as a participant in the past. We’re a decade older and living a very different life now.
Wednesday: Purpose. We had some small activities, a fair amount of journaling, and we also broke into small groups to discuss each day’s topic.
Spying on the little ones outside, doing their choir practice under the tent.
Mornings on the campus! Thursday!
Thursday is picnic & water fight day!
Erin helped me stuff some of the puffs I knit while we hung out in the shade of the golf cart, away from the melee. Plus, all of the speakers for TAF 2022!
Alison is trying to hide under the speakers to avoid being part of the water fight… it didn’t work though. The Youth (high school) program was gigantic this year. I think this photo is just the staff… there were also 100+ campers.
More puffs! Erin said they were pancakes, so she decided to open a cafe with her pancakes. She even made a whole menu for the cafe.
Friday… just like that, my speaker sessions were over! The last topic was gratitude. And we ended on a post-it activity where participants could reflect on the week.
Back in the speakers’ lounge, we all decided to hit up the Manchester University store this year. I got a new sweatshirt but the one I’m wearing here is actually from a decade ago when they officially switched from “College” to “University.”
Friday night is Night Market! A.k.a. the counselors are incredibly creative and come up with all sorts of wacky games for the campers to play with their big sibs/little sibs (elementary/JH kids are paired with high schoolers throughout the week for interprogramming).
Saturday is a relax day for us, while everyone else prepares their acts for TAF Night– the talent show that ends the week.
Labs participants all did presentations about their projects and their week at TAF.
Pei is a ‘grandma’ to these campers whose counselor was Pei’s campers one upon a time…
Portraits on the quad before TAF Night!
I found this one on my camera after the fact, hahaha
TAF Labs!
Paul was my counselor when I was in junior high. Now his kids are campers!
With the TaiwaneseAmerican.org folks! Amber Collective followers might recognize Leona from our Asian Pacific American Heritage Month history lessons series this year. She is the Editor-in-Chief of TaiwaneseAmerican.org, which Ho-Chie started. Ho-Chie was my program director when I first started going to TAF at age 10, and he has been there ever since. We call him the godfather of Taiwanese America.
In normal times, many parents come for the weekend before taking their kids home at the end of camp, but this year we were in our bubble for the whole week so there were no extra people in the audience. We took our audience participation very seriously!
Every program performs both a choir song and a choreographed dance number. It’s actually really impressive that we still do all of this, all in one week. There are also other performances from campers that sign up, and the night always ends with the slideshow, which is what I used to work on, so much so that it birthed our whole professional videography company.
Then the afterparty!
These kids only have one dance move: jumping up and down. Is this how it is these days? We are old.
Sunday is for farewells and yearbook signings! First photo, Ellie and Erin. Second, me with Julianne, who was my elementary aged camper back when I was a program director.
Alison was also my elementary-aged camper. Justin and Melinda would have been, but they didn’t start going until later. But they were my Labs program directors this year!
And that was it! Over in a flash! Back through the cornfields, and over to Chicago, almost three hours later.
Thank you to Vinson for driving these two old folks to TAF… he picked us up at 5am from Milwaukee (where he lives) and delivered us back to Chicago after TAF. We had never met before this, but that’s how the TAF family works!
Thank you to everyone for making this such a wonderful welcome back to TAF and for welcoming Alex into this TAF world too.
Unfortunately I already booked over TAF next year so I won’t be there for the week in person, but I’m already trying to be more involved again in other ways!
Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures, even in quarantine. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.
