IHP Annual Alumni Reunion + Please Touch Museum visit
On May 18th, I organized my first alumni reunion in my role as Alumni Relations Director and I am happy to report that it was a big success! Over 20 alumni and friends gathered together to share a lovely brunch catered by Assad Khoury from the restaurant Kuzina by Sofia.
Brunch consisted of a buffet keeping with the theme of the Global Gala, Treasures of Armenia, which took place later that day. The food was great, but the best part of the morning was the reminiscing about times spent in the house and trading fun anecdotes with the current residents. It is incredible to see how their experiences mirror those of many of us who lived in the house even over 30 years ago!
A funny anecdote happened when Jonathan Gaev arrived at the reunion. Jonathan is an alumnus from the 80s and has continued his involvement with IHP in different capacities throughout the years. When he arrived he was pleasantly surprised to find our caterer and went straight to greet him at the chef-manned station. They started laughing loudly and cheerily, and I got curious to find out how they knew each other. I found out that Jonathan Gaev has a tradition of taking his mom out to lunch every Saturday at the Kuzina by Sofia restaurant in Cherry Hill. This particular Saturday, Jon thought it was OK to miss Assad’ s food in order to make it to the IHP alumni reunion. Well, he ended up still having Assad’ s food for lunch!
I didn’ t know it, but Jonathan and Assad have been good friends for many years. This was such a great coincidence and added an element of surprise and camaraderie to the event that I could not have planned.
A fun fact about Assad is that his sister Anastasia Khoury, is an IHP alumna from 1979 and this is how we were connected to Assad in the first place!
The alumni reunion was a great opportunity to see familiar faces and also meet a few new ones. In fact, some of our young alumni came with brand new additions to their families and it was a chance to introduce these generations to each other. Julio Correa( IHP 98-02) from Colombia and George Khalaf( IHP 00-03) from Syria, were there with their babies Briana and Dean who have birthdays just a couple months apart. They said that they are looking forward for their children to grow up with an extended international family. For these children, like for mine, an international circle of friends growing up will be the most natural thing in the world. In my case, my children( who are Mexican-American and are growing up bilingual in Spanish and English) consider our friends from International House their extended family. Their favorite“ cousins” are the children of Cigdem Ogutveren( IHP 00-03) from Turkey and Richard Knebel( IHP 01-03) from Norway. For my kids, having“ cousins” who are Turkish-Norwegian- American is absolutely normal and provides an example of a multicultural family life like their own. A life where differences are cherished and celebrated, multilingualism is encouraged and international travel is part of growing up.
In order to accommodate the growing families of our young alumni, we also organized a trip to the Please Touch Museum after the brunch, during which time we caught up with even more friends like Clelia Lyra Battestelli( IHP 96) and Eric Battestelli. This was a fun-filled day and we hope that next year more people will be able to make it down to Philly to celebrate with us.
The next alumni reunion is being planned for June 7, 2014... so mark your calendars and start planning your trip to Philadelphia!
Sarvelia Peralta-Duran
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