Camp Part VIII

Has it really been a week since my last post?! It really only feels like a few hours. I have barely had time to breath, but I love it.

Camp has been stressful in a good way. It has taught me so much. My hesitations about switching to a younger age group were correct. It threw me and my co-counselor, Allon, off for about a week and a half. We are just now really starting to understand our campers. I feel that this summer has made me grow dramatically as a person.

Well, what has happened since the last update? Its more like what hasn't happened...

I think I'm just going to talk about a few things.

I am the nature specialist again. I played this game called "hardcore hide and seek" with my campers. Basically I teach them about how animals camouflage by playing hide and seek in the woods. The kids get to wear face paint and they love it. I have a lot of fun as well.

Parsha Players!!!! If you are not a Judaean, let me explain. Each week there is a portion of the Torah that is read and we, the Parsha Players, reenact it in a humorous manner for the whole camp.

Tiyul! We went on the a camping trip with our kids. It was only one night. The camp ground really wasn't a camp ground. I have pictures. It disgusted me. That part is for another post. Anyways, we went tubing down a river. That's right, we sat in inner tubes and let the current float us down. I found it a little boring, but it was a great way to bond with the campers.

I had my second day off. It is annoying that they were only five days apart. Sometimes that is just how life works though. The day off ended up being the best one I have had this whole summer. My friend and fellow counselor Noah and I camped out in the far fields of camp. Then in the morning all of the people on the day off (myself, Elisse, Allison, Noah, Itamar,and Lisa)went into Waupaca. We walked around, had lunch at the Waupaca Cafe (all you can eat fish fry!), and then we hung out at this cool park on the back side of all the shops. Once we got back to camp Noah and I climbed one of the high ropes elements called mission impossible. Its a set of railroad ties made into a giant cable ladder. Seems simple to climb, but is far from it. You work as a team climbing it, and Noah pretty much carried me up. Thanks everyone that went on the day off, it was a ton of fun.

Today was Yom T’nua for the second session (see Camp Part II for an explaination on Yom T’nua). This session I ran the Pluralism station with Lisa. We were really ill prepared. I felt bad, but I feel we did the best we could. I think the younger kids got something out of it though.

My group of boys is having some difficulties. There is a majority of the boys that are really well behaved. Then there is a few boys who ruin everything for the rest of the cabin. Allon and I exert too much effort disciplining the misbehaving boys instead of rewarding the good kids. So we developed a point system with A-ron, our merkez this session. This way the good kids will get to do some fun things that the bad ones will miss out on. Hopefully this will inspire some attitude change.

Next weekend a lot of visitors are coming to camp. I am really excited! Emily and Maddie who are long time YJ friends that I haven’t seen since December, and Kuhn who has been busy ruining around the world. Check out his blog, the link is on the side of this page.

On a side note, I have done more reading this summer than I have in the last year. I have read Three Cups of Tea and I have almost finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Both have been really good. I highly recommend them.

33 more days until Year Course!!!!

P.s. Thanks for the grad gifts!!!!

P.p.s. Soon there will be a picture post!

Camp Part VII

I am currently on my day off in Appleton. I'm with seven other people from camp. We are going to go see Batman and get some Buffalo Wild Wings. Then hit up this amazing Jansport outlet. I really don't need anything, but when you can get misprinted shirts for $1, who wouldn't go?

I got sick yesterday. Some nasty cold that is going around the staff. I hoping if I sleep a lot and drink a ton of water I can flush this thing out.

Last night a huge storm rolled through camp. It was insane! We were all doing the normal post shabbous activites, rikud and such, and I look outside. I couldn't see a thing until the lighting hit. Which was every 30 seconds. Our assistant director didn't let us leave camp for our day off until the storm was gone. About 5 minutes later we drove right into it. We were going 35 mph on the highway and still couldn't see anything.

Now that I think about it, I has rained just about everyday during second session.

Year Course in 41 days!!!!

Beautiful CYJ

Some of the beauty of CYJ.

Camp Part VI

Today is the second day of second session. Things are going pretty well. My group of kids is called Arazim. They are sixth through seventh graders. My nervousness about having younger kids has mostly passed. I'm getting used to it.

As soon as this session started the temperature went up about fifteen degrees. And as it gets hotter, the mosquitoes become more numerous.

At some of the meals we have started playing this crazy song. The Israelis taught us a dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0p0oPqys1k


SOOO CATCHY!

Camp Part V

I am back at camp now. The next session starts on Monday so the staff is running around finishing up things. The second session is a lot smaller than the first by about 30 kids. It will make for a much closer group of kids. I switched age groups this session. I will now have Arazim: 6th and 7th graders. Right now I feel like it is such a change of attitude from the campers I had last session. Machon was easy for me to connect with the campers. They were old enough to understand things if I talked to them like a normal person they generally got it. But now I don’t really know what to expect. I’m sure I will do a good job. I’m just nervous.

Today I swam across the lake. About ¾ mile. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. My knees hurt a little, but it was really refreshing.

This next session there are five campers from KC! Granted three of them are from the same family and two from another, this leaves for a potential of programming in KC next year.

Speaking of next year, I am so excited! Today I ate lunch with about six of my fellow staff members who have all be on year course. They told me all kinds of funny stories. It just made me really excited. Also on the plus side, there are about twenty or so Israelis at camp. Which mean that while I am in Israel I will have about twenty people to go hang out with! Hopefully that involves free food :)

Right now I am sitting in the art room working on signs for welcoming campers with some other staff. We are also rocking out to “Bad Touch” by the Bloodhound. Good Times.

I’m starting to wonder if anyone even reads this thing. I know my parents do, or at least they say they do. I hope at least a few people read it. At least its a good way for me to keep a track of what happened.

I really want to upload photos here, but the camp’s internet has been temporarily slowed. We exceeded our limited for data exchanged (thank you face book). We are only allowed 17,000 megabytes a month. It is hard to imagine we got there, but we did.

Quote of the day:
"Its not rain. Its liquid sunshine!"

Until next time,
Daniel

Camp Part IV

Right now its about 3 am and I am sitting in Karen's basement.

Wow, what a last few days!

Tuesday was packing day. We also allowed the campers to stay up late since it was their last night in camp. Yesterday we were up bright and early and had everyone loaded on buses to their various destinations. I went to Chicago for the two days between the sessions of camp. I, along with some of my fellow counselors, am staying at one of my co-counselor's house. Today we went to downtown. It was pretty cool. Out of the whole group I was the only non-hebrew speaker. I really need to start working on it. Although, I could understand most of the conversations.

So downtown was cool. We went down Madison and Michagan, had some good food, and of course we went to Millenium Park. We would have seen more but it started raining like crazy.

After downtown, we took a train back to Highland Park where Karen lives. The two blocks from the station to her house was one of those silly moments I won't forget. We got off the train and it was raining harder than before. Part of the group started going the wrong direction, so we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off. When we finally got to Karen's we are all soaking wet and the other half of the group is waiting at the station for Karent to come and pick them up.

Once the rain fiasco was over, Liron, Natalie, Karen, and I head to Karen's best friend's birthday party. It was nice to meet some non-camp people.

Besides all that fun stuff, we have done a ton of laundry and eaten way too much. Thanks for having us Karen!

Tomorrow we have to be in Skokie about 9:30 to do some shopping at Old Orchard before taking the bus back to camp.


P.S.
Becasue of silly computer issues, I am having problems uploading pics. However, there are some on the facebook page.

Camp Part III

First session is coming to a close. It feels like yesterday I was arriving late from New Jersey.

Today was a very special day at CYJ. (EVERYDAY IS VERY SPECIAL DAY AT CYJ!) Today was Yom Yisrael, Israel day. Throughout the day we had the campers going to different stations learning about several famous Israelis: Golda Meir, Moshe Diane, Ariel Sharon, and Yonatan Netanyahu. The best part was that all the food throughout the day was Israeli. YUM! Ani ohev bamba!

This last weekend was the last Shabbat of first session which means it was Machon Shabbat. I don’t think I mentioned this, but the age group of campers I have is called Machon. Anyways, my campers lead Shabbat services, singing at lunch, and discussion groups. It was beautiful thing to finally see a more mature attitude from my campers. It really made it feel like all of those long nights of writing programs, those talks with kids you didn’t want to have, and endless conversations, all worth it.

Last night there was an incident in our cabin. One of the boys did something really mean to another one. The worst part of this was that not even half an hour before I gave a talk to all the boys about how bullying is not accepted in any way. It really made me and the staff very upset. Hopefully that will be the only problem we encounter.

Currently there are serving their punishment. Since today was Yom Yisrael we are having a Israeli style party outside. There is pita making (YUM), dancing, art, and food. My campers have to sit out because of the shinanigans they pulled last night. Noah, Alon, and I have been taking shifts watching them. It has actually turned into a pretty good bonding time.

Tomorrow is out last real day at camp. I have to lead another nature program and a sports club. Hopefully I will get a bike ride in there somewhere. Starting on Wednesday I will be in Chicago for a few days between sessions. I will actually get to see the city!

Camp Part II

It is past the middle of the first session of camp. Things have gone pretty well. I am going to attempt to catch you up on what how things are going now that I have a little bit of time. First off I am working with seven other counselors, four of which are Israeli, and we all get along very well. The group of chanichim (campers) we have are thirteen boys and eighteen girls. It is your typical group of incoming freshmen. I cannot even begin to describe the amount of drama. They also seem to have a major problem with getting quite and listening, but what can you expect? Slowly they are getting better though.

On a side note, I know many of their siblings through YJ. It is interesting to see how similar and how different they are from their siblings.

Niv, our head Merkez (head counselor), chose an educational theme for our group. The theme is “Israel is great, but not perfect”. So far we have run three of the seven peulot (programs). They have been effective and feel like the kids have gotten something out of it.

On most days I get about an hour off. When I am not working on other programs, I spend most of that time riding my bike on the country roads that surround the camp. They are great riding, but because of time constraints it is hard for me get more then about ten miles in a day.

Last week our group went on a tiyul (campout) down to the Kickapoo river and canoed about 20 miles. It was a ton of fun. All the flooding from three weeks ago had a dramatic effect on the landscape. Many of the trees surround the river had fallen and because of this most places were only wide enough for one canoe.

Yesterday was Yom T’nua ( Day of the Movement). It was like being on Maz all over again. The activities were broken down for each pillar of our movement: Pluralism, Jewish Identity, Zionism, Peer Leadership, and Social Action. I ran the Peer Leadership station. Also, I was “Judaean Boy”! As soon as I can I will post pictures.

Hmmm what else? My birthday was great! A few friends threw me a late night birthday party.

Last Thursday I had a day off and went into Waupaca after sleeping in and attempting to wakeboard earlier that morning. I finally got some cheese curds!!!! My next day off is this Thursday. I’m going to Appleton with a few other staffies. It should be a good time.

10 days left in first session. It is bitter sweet.

TOMORROW IS MACCABIA!!!!! (Color Wars) I am captain of the blue team. Each team is themed after a Nintendo character. We are Donkey Kong. Tomorrow promises to be crazy.