al hagova staff dinner

this was hands-down my favorite night in camp. we cooked and ate all this amazing organic food. what a feast!

here i am in the shack with dt and bc cooking up a storm. fire fire!

tl and more fire, this time in an igul. it's pita time!

mb, dt, ta, and dl at the igul. smokin'!

late night yum

one night i brought some ice cream scoops to help an edah out. in return, a huge bowl of ice cream.
here i am with mb doing one of our favorie things: eating ice cream. is there anything else to do at night in the summer?

shabbat singing and female energy

overall i had a pretty selfish shabbat. (selfish looks so much like the word shellfish!)
sang a lot with people i like to sing with instead of 600 kids banging on tables. at one point the group boiled down to five women - two americans and three israelis. it was really intense; we just kept singing and singing; almost as if we were afraid something might happen to us if we were to stop. i don't think i've ever sang that much with just women. it was great! especially since between the five of us we knew so many of the same songs.
then on sunday the jts students had lunch with neshama carlebach, who taught us one of her favorite niggunim that her father wrote, "niggun neshama" (her name for it).
after shabbat she performed a concert for the whole camp. it was exciting to hear the songs all jazzed up and i think she is a great role model for the kids in camp, epecially the young teens.
okay, sleep time. more later!

sweaty day off in nyc

days off are so key. sad that they have to end. luckily i am going back to camp with much excitement and little stress. tonight is the zimriyah - the whole camp comes together for tons of singing hebrew songs (each unit and group of staff has a song). sadly i am not super psyched about the one i'm performing, but i am excited to be part of the camp spirit of the evening.

tomorrow morning i leave on a two day bike trip. don't get too excited - i'm driving the truck with all the luggage, water, food, and of course, first aid equipment. basically i'm driving about 3 miles over 6 or 7 hours, plus a lunch break. i think the plan is to drive for five, rest for five, etc. driving behing 15 bikers has the potential to be quite dangerous. luckily there will be plenty of exotic weeds growing along the side of the road for me to pick and make into things. (thanks ms and ye)

had another gourmet meal last night with ab and a long overdue lunch with my uncle today. my plan is to remain inside until i head back to camp on the train later on. less movement=less sweat=less heat rash.

oh i almost forgot! i think i had the highlight of my summer, in camp that is. out of camp my highlight was definitely the three day camping trip, the highlight of that being shachrit and informal conversation. anyway, mon. night sb and i were sitting by the al hagova shack nigguning up a storm. ta joined in. then we added a drum. then two gesher (16 year old) campers joined in as well. it was so spontaneous and fabulous and right in the middle of everything. okay so it was in the middle of anything, but it was by the shack, it was unscheduled, and there were people who passed by. beyond having chances to be in the woods (which is, in my opninon, quite few), i crave more chances to sing. and though i love singing in a small group, i think the public jamming that went on mon. night, which reminds me of late nights at havurah, is something i want to make happen more often. not only is it something i enjoy, but i like the idea that it's participatory. and especially since we can't use instruments on shabbat, a weeknight jam may be just what this camp needs to bring peopole together in a new way. i guess we'll see if we can find other opportunities to, um, be spontaneous. sb says he's down.

okay i'm waiting for bz to join me in a movie on my couch. then it's to the train for me.

in closing, some photos from the past week. the first is a sunset, the second is me with some of the al hagova staff on the low ropes course. i am wearing long pants and sleeves to avoide the poison ivy that was surrounding us. luckily, i survived!

real update, no photos

i'm sitting in the camp office on duty to drive people around on visiting day. it was raining before but now it's nice and cool - breezy and not too sunny.
i'm exhausted after staying up until 3am last night. (that's actually 4am real world time; we have 'camp time' here which is an hour earlier). what was i doing up so late?
well, a few things.
first, i wasn't tired. i really wasn't tired. usually on shabbat i nap between lunch and dinner; somewhere between 3pm and 6pm. the past few shabbats i have had programming to do at 5pm. this shabbat i learned parshat hashavua for 2 hours with sb and ls. we got up to the fourth aliyah which i think it a record. since i took dr. marcus's class last fall on numbers/bemidbar, i am super pscyhed to be in the midst of it. i have this academic knowledge about it, but i haven't looked deep into the text to see how it mirrors my life since last summer. [ah last summer. memories of eh and bz and others on the rooftop...]
anyway, since last night was "cafe aby" (a crazy staff evening program where everyone stuffs their face with quesedillas, root beer floats, mozzerella sticks and other junk...like greek salad with grape leaves!), i decided to take a nap from 5-7pm, thus skipping dinner. and what an amazing nap it was!
since my room (yes, i have a single room. this is what happens when you are 26 and work at a camp) has 3 huge windows that face the area where the little kids play and bring in a LOT OF SUN (yes i know you are all super jealous now), i need a very special set up when i take an afternoon nap.
after i turn on my ceiling fan (how cool is that?), i put in my ear plugs. then i curl up in bed and put a pillow over one of my ears. then the end of the pillow case falls over my eyes and i drift into blissful sleep. fabulous, no?
okay, back to sarah staying up late.
after helping some campers tidy up their bunk and filling up at cafe aby, i started to head out to check email. this was around 11pm. i ended up taking a detour to visit sb on shmirah outside b9. sb was avoiding working on an article for the camp newspaper. after complimenting me on my writing/blogging skills (smart people always compliment a person before asking them for a favor), i sat down for what turned out to be a 3.5 hour project.
okay well that's my anti-climatic ending to why so tired today. more rambing updates soon!

"i finally accomplished something in my life besides video games"

this is one of the many "peak experiences" that my campers reflected on after a 3 day back packing trip on the appalacian trail. success! below are some photos from the trip.

Here we are before the trip - so clean!


Here I am with Tamar doing our tvi impression: (That's the little deer symbol on Israeli postage stamps.)


Here I am at a beautiful overlook with Ayala and Ilana:

blogging is back!

so i'm at camp. crazy place - tons going on all the time. lots of shachrit services. hundreds of kids. and it's quite rare to be over 22 around here. but it doesn't bother me; i get to do the most fun stuff so can't complain. over shabbat i did a teva-themed program for cochavim, the kids entering 4th grade this fall. such sweetness!

this week i went on two caving trips and a 'scrambling' trip to a huge mountain with a waterfall. scrambling is like a cross between rock climbing and hiking. we actually hiked from new york into connecticut, into massachusetts, and back into new york. i told my campers they had to stop being yankees fans when they left new york. they didn't really listen to me.

here's a photo of me 20 feet in the air on top of the rock wall:

here i am on the appalacian trail with a through hiker named "chair man:"

last but certainly not least...since june 19 i became an aunt! a week after that i had the pleasure of going to lexington for about 24 hours to meet rafael velvel and be there for his bris.
here are a few photos (see above link to his blog above for even more):