Thank you for welcoming Elena to the Belvoir Terrace community and giving her such an amazing opportunity. We sent you a shy girl who loved music and she returned from Belvoir a confident and independent young woman with a network of friends who love the arts as much as she does. Her violin and piano teachers were very impressed with the progress she made in music and music theory -- and the rest of us were blown away by the artwork she created when she wasn't making music!  

Perhaps more important, our girl's social confidence has soared. It usually takes Elena a while to get comfortable with new people. (Most of her San Francisco friends are girls she has known since she was a baby or kindergartener.) She never imagined that she might meet girls in June and consider them sisters by August. Elena was apprehensive about being so far from home and would only commit to attending the first three weeks. Once at Belvoir, however, she couldn't imagine coming home without seeing her more extroverted bunkmates and friends perform in the dance recitals, plays, and musicals they had been rehearsing for (and chatting about) all summer. In the end, Elena saw more plays at Belvoir than she had seen in her entire life prior to camp. (And she's even talking about working up the courage to sign up for musical theatre next year.) 

Aside from music, our daughter is primarily interested in Math and Science. (Lately she has been saying she wants to be an astrophysicist or software engineer -- though we'd expect a 11-year old to change her mind in the years to come.) We love that she got to spend a summer immersed in the arts and that she broadened her interests beyond music to the visual arts and more. Will it change her future career path? Make her a more creative and inventive scientist or engineer? Or make her a lifelong hobbyist, audience and patron of the arts? We don't know exactly how this summer-long immersion will play out in her future, but we are excited to see it unfold.

Thank you so much for making such a transformative summer possible.

Marivi T., Elena's mother.