A few more details, + Japanese temple

Hi!

Some people have asked a few more details about Frank’s new job and location…(I think my brother Kris may suspect we have made the whole thing up…) So I’ll fill in just a little more of the puzzle.

The company is Parexel International, located in Waltham, Massachusetts. (Note the pronunciation: WALL-tham, and the 2nd syllable rhymes with “ham,” not a schwa sound like you want to say it. First syllable is emphasized, and the second syllable rhymes with “ham.”)

If you find Boston on http://mapquest.com/, you see that Boston has 2 beltways, an inner beltway and an outer beltway. Parexel is just outside the "inner beltway."

The company provides the testing services needed to research medicines. Companies at different stages of having medicines approved need people to try the medicines. Parexel finds the groups of people worldwide, who will try the medicines for arthritis, cancers, etc., etc. to see if they work. Here is the opening paragraph provided by Wikipedia.

PAREXEL International is a Contract Research Organization based in Waltham, Massachusetts and founded in 1983 by Josef H. von Rickenbach (still current CEO) and Anne Sayigh. It provides services for companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, including consulting and clinical studies. The name PAREXEL comes from Paracelsus, a Swiss physician considered as the father of modern toxicology.[1] PAREXEL employs more than 7,000 people worldwide in over 50 countries[2], and has supported nearly all of the 50 best-selling drugs on the market.[3]

That part will be interesting for Frank: watching the progress of different medicines towards approval or not.

Another interesting part for him will be travel. His responsibilities will include groups of people in the U.S. and in Latin America. Periodically, he will visit people in Parexel offices in CA, VA, and NC, and south of our border he will visit Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. (coincidentally, Mexico City :) ).

So, there are a few more of those details! Otherwise, the week has been eventful but blurry for me...I lost a couple of days to stomach flu.

David, resident 7th grader, on the other hand, spent many many minutes of the week on his Japanese Temple project for his Social Science class. You can see the final product below. I was impressed! (If not a little awed/disgusted at the amount of time it took. Impatient Me, you know.)

I will sign off now. Have a healthy week! Love, Kari