Jennifer B profile picture

Jennifer B

Jennifer Bennett :)

About Me

I'm Jennifer. Oldest of 5 children. Grew up in Indiana (Kokomo, Arcadia, and Cicero). Nice to place to grow up, but I prefer living in Southern California. San Diego is my chosen home. I just graduated from UCSD, majoring in linguistics. Now I have to figure out what I want to do with my life! I work part-time as an Instructional Assistant for the San Diego Community College District. I work with adult students learning English. I'm an aspiring ESL teacher, so this is a great, paid "internship" kind of job. The students always inspire me to be a better person. They are wonderful people working hard to better their lives and I'm excited to be a part of their life journey. :)I love salsa dancing, merengue, many other types of dancing, live music, coffee shops, wine and cheese, traveling. I LOVE TO TRAVEL. I've taught kids at English camp the past few summers in China. I love it. It's so challenging, but so rewarding. Always rocks my world. Teaching is an adventure...China is an adventure, too.I am the organizer of the San Diego ESL Meetup Group. If you're culturally minded and want to meet nice people from around the globe, go to international parties, practice English or other languages, eat ethnic foods, go dancing, etc., check us out at http://esl.meetup.com/69 I also organize the San Diego Salsa Meetup Group. It's been hard for me to get out recently though. Check out our site at: http://salsa.meetup.com/150If you want to know more about me or what I'm up to, email me at [email protected]....

My Interests

Foreign languages, cultures, salsa dancing, live music concerts, going out. I LOVE to travel and meet new, interesting people. :)I can be very outgoing and sometimes very shy. Depends on my mood and who I'm around. If you get me out dancing, traveling, having fun, I'm very outgoing. Sometimes I prefer be a wallflower and spectator.

I'd like to meet:

I love to meet fun, open-minded people. I am very interested in people who love culture, languages, other people, animals, dancing, good food. I am a Meetup.com fan. It's a great way to meet people with similar interests. I've joined too many groups...I'd also love to meet Jane Goodall. She's amazing. Musicians, actors, I get a little starstruck. I grew up in Indiana, so meeting anyone famous is a hoot for me! :)

Music:

I love music. I love almost all types of music. I love the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Beatles, Billy Joel, Led Zeppelin, Bee Gees, Eagles, Pink Floyd, The Police (and Sting), Prince, John Lennon, Tracy Chapman, Tina Turner, Annie Lennox, Michael Jackson, Queen, Supertramp. I'm getting into the Flaming Lips now. They're great! I also love to hear classical, jazz, bluegrass, some country, some rap...I usually like all genres.Yes, I LOVE FALSETTO. I'm a dork. I love Air Supply (though they sucked in concert), Lionel Richie, Dan Fogelberg, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Christopher Cross, Carpenters, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Five for Fighting, Fine Young Cannibals. I'm a soft rock nerd. Yes, I listen to KIXY 96.5, soft rock with less talk. Falsetto is especially enticing. It's sexy somehow...even if it's not manly. I melt down. Love fun stuff like B-52's, Cindy Lauper, Prince, Madonna, Billy Idol, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Divinyls, George Michael, Wham, A-Ha.Classical is awesome. Love piano, violin, cello. Melts my heart.Pixies (awesome), Ben Folds Five, Shins, Pavement, Talking Heads, They Might Be Giants, Guided By Voices, White Stripes, Breeders, Sleater Kinney, Cub (the song Chinchilla is hilarious!), Neutral Milk Hotel (gorgeous), Flaming Lips (love them).Locally, I dig (Secret Apollo), Jason Mraz, Jason Yamaoka (J.Turtle), Jane Lui (that girl is TALENTED), 7th Day Buskers, Biddy Bums, JD Boucharde, Katie Strand, Linda Sargent, and Tom Griesgraber. I know I've seen Tristan Prettyman at an open mic, but it's been a long time. I better check her out again soon!

Movies:

Favorite fun movies: Goonies. I was so smitten with Corey Feldman, and my sister with Sean Astin. I also love Dirty Dancing (yes, I like Patrick Swayze. I can't help it). A Christmas Story. I laugh and love it every time I see it. I love holiday movies. My sister and I watch Emmet Otters Jugband Christmas every year. We LOVE it! Ghostbusters, National Lampoon Vacation movies. The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Lost in Translation, Groundhog Day. Love Bill Murray and Chevy Chase. The Star Wars series is fun. I love R2-D2. I laugh so hard when he gets ejected from the swamp in Dagobah. Hilarious. :)Favorite movies (many make me bawl like a baby): Shawshank Redemption, Shall We Dance (Japanese version), Girl with a Pearl Earring (breathtaking), Billy Elliot (awesome!), Pretty in Pink (love Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald), Sixteen Candles, High Fidelity, Say Anything (love John Cusack), Grease, Oliver Twist, Annie, Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz (I like musicals...there are so many I have yet to see.) Legends of the Fall (need a box of Kleenex), Bridges of Madison County, Braveheart, Edward Scissorhands, Dead Poets' Society, I am Sam (the part where Sam and his friends try to come up with an outgoing message for his answering machine is so adorable!), Philadelphia, Seven (love Kevin Spacey), The Godfather, Irreconcilable Differences (went to see this with my dad and little sister when my parents were going through a divorce..broke my heart), Kramer vs. Kramer, Sideways, Garden State, Life is Beautiful, Boyz in the Hood, My Girl, Fairwell My Concubine, Forest Gump (when Forrest finds out he's a daddy!), Beaches, Titanic (the realism of so many people trapped and drowning make it really emotional for me), Gladiator, Million Dollar Baby, Schindler's List (can't even watch it all the way through), Motorcycle Diaries, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Color Purple (Great book, too!), Lassie, Iron Giant, My Dog Skip (thinking about it makes me emotional), The Silence of the Lambs (I have a major thing for Anthony Hopkins), The English Patient (Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes), La Bamba (When Richie dies and his brother yells out "Richie" I almost hyperventilate.)I'm so busy that I hardly watch movies lately...Movies I want to see: Sophie's Choice, Aviator, The Pianist, Whale Rider, The Way We Were, Funnygirl, Passion of the Christ, Annie Hall, Citizen Kane, West Side Story, and many, many more...

Television:

When I need to decompress, I watch Vh1. Best Week Ever cracks me up. Mad TV. Love CSI (I have a mad crush on William Peterson who plays Gil Grissom, the detective...I also like the cute Asian guy on there, but I don't know his name. I love the intellectual, eccentric ones...), Six Feet Under (amazing show). Used to watch Queer as Folk with a friends on Sunday nights...it's fun. Not much time for TV these days. I was starting to get into Arrested Development, then it went away! I enjoyed watching Big Love, but I don't have HBO anymore.

Books:

I finally started reading again...I always felt too guilty reading for fun while I was in school because I had so many textbooks to read. Recently, I've been reading Dave Sedaris. Very entertaining. I also just finished The Pianist. Powerful story about how a man surivived the Holocaust in Warsaw. I am most likely to read self-help, inspirational books. Simple Abundance. Novels, Catcher in the Rye, Black Boy, Bean Trees, Secret Life of Bees. Flowers for Algernon (cry!!!), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Lucky. Harry Potter. I prefer short-stories, novels, poetry. Big books seem like such a chore when I'm so busy. This is embarrassing to admit, but when I was in middle school, I loved VC Andrews' books. I was so into the Flowers in the Attic series, but mostly into Heaven. I loved the Heaven series. They're twisted. Read some good Asian books, Joy Luck Club, Thick Face, Black Heart (and more that I can't remember right now). I just got an autobiographical book written by Cynthia Lennon about her life with John Lennon. She was his first wife. So far I'm really enjoying it. I think John Lennon was a genius, an ass, and an amazing man. I'm a John Lennon fan.

Heroes:

Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall, Mother Teresa, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and a few mentors in my everyday life :)