Encampment- Boards Night (Finally)

I am finally writing about encampment and now that I have power but no internet I will have some time to write without distraction although it also means my actual posting may be sporadic.

Monday my dad drove Jacob and me to Trader Joe's in Danbury, where we met up with Tammi and the rest of the board. Our first task was to fit all six of us PLUS our luggage(which was the killer) in to the mini-van. With a little help from my dad we made it work. Rachel and I squished in the back where we could not feel our feet for the next four hours.

We were the second board to arrive at camp. We met three Tzafon board members, David J. (President), Shula (Rel/Ed), and my counter-part Jordyn (Mem/Kad). We start unloading the vans. It is raining and drizzling all day, so there was mud every where.

A while later EPA and Hagesher's boards arrive together. As soon everyone is settle we got to work. The rest of the day was pretty boring but it was really nice to get to know the other board members and have bonding time before everyone else came.

Quad Regional Boards!!

I Am Still Alive

I haven't written for a while because I was at encampment for a week then only home far a day and then back to NERUSY encampment, and now I am trying to finish AP work before school Monday. I promise to put a full account of both encampments up as soon as I finish my AP work. I just thought I should share so no one thinks I died.

USY Handbook: Encampment!!!!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow a lot of you will be going to encampment or at least someone you know will be. This post is to give you an idea of what to expect. Since I have never been to encampment before I enlisted the help of someone who has gone both as a USYer and as staff. So here is the first ever guest blogger post by NoriAnna!!!!!

Imagine the best summer at camp squeezed into one week with your usy friends from 4 different regions. That simply describes Quad Regional Encampment. Hanefesh, EPA, Hagesher, and Tzafon get together for six days to have the fun of their life. Activities range from Maccabia (Color War), arts and crafts, sports & a dance. After a n eventful few days, Shabbat arrives. USYers and Kadimaniks gather outside taking pictures with their new and old friends. Everyone then heads down to the outdoor synagogue in front of the Lake(as long as there is no rain!).Details of Encampment could go on forever, but I'll stop here. It's a great experience for all. If you cannot make it this summer..hope you can join next year!!

Six Flags Remembers Me

I will quickly finish my week of camp with just a picture from Friday.

Campers on a Swing at a Nature Center

Yesterday I went with my friend from camp, Ilana to Six Flags New England. When it came time for lunch I had the same challenge as always finding meat free food. Its not hard. We went to a wraps place and I order mine and as she made it she asked if I wanted chicken and I said no. She left for a minute with the plate that had the wrap on it to but fries on the plate. When she came back she made a point of ensuring me that there was no chicken in anything on my plate. I kind of wondered if she maybe was the person who helped me when I got fries when I went with USY. Maybe she remembered just how crazy I was.

Ilana, Teety, Me...Oh and Martian Dude

The Case of the Bad Potato Chips

I had finished my post for today earlier but I decided to wait until tomorrow to post that entry. I have just had an experience I feel I should write about now.

I am currently on a train coming home from Springfield, MA. In avoidance of reading my book for APUSH I went to the café car to buy a bag of potato chips. There were to choices both from the brand Utz. I choose the home style ones because I happened to like kettle cook chips. I opened the bag up and they where kettle cooked. I popped one in my mouth unsuspectingly, they tasted off. I then notice the OU was not where it usually was on Utz bags. After further investigation I did not find an OU but did find lard in the ingredients.

The Culprit

LARD!!! Immediately I felt sick to my stomach. I felt terrible but it wasn’t my fault how would I know? I had never had lard before.

I didn’t want the chips to go to waste though, so I offered them around and one woman was about to eat them but first looked at the back and realized the same thing I had moments before, the chips had lard. After talking to her she told me she was vegan. She was also shocked to see lard as an ingredient. She said to me that she thought that it should be publish in large letters on the front. There are many reason someone might not eat lard:

Religion

Vegetarian/Vegan

Health

So if you ever see Grandma Utz’s Hand Cooked Potato Chips be warned they contain lard. 

New Focus

I have mostly been focusing on USY as that is the point of this blog but I have decided that I am going to change it a little. As I have Kinda of started doing I am going to also focus on what it is like going to a public high school after being in a Jewish school for so long. I will still have just as much USY stuff but I will just have more other stuff too.

More on camp. We are up to Thursday. For lunch there was chocolate pudding and afterwards we had cake for color war. Basically all my girls were on sugar highs for this trip. I on the other hand was exhausted the day before we had gone to the Beardsley Zoo and they need a counselor to go on a bus to Stamford and I didn't get home until about 5:45 and I was on Bendryl at the time. I was not in the mood to take eight 4 year-olds bowling, not even a little bit. So there I was in a bowling alley with my girls. The one the one thing I learned was; If you ever get the urge to take 4 year-olds bowling, DON'T.

Two Entertaining Conversations

This was the first day everyone was supposed to come in in their color war colors, as the teams were only announced the day before. Originally Lily and I were both on Blue Torah but one of the judging counselors, Big Sarah(there are two Sarahs) thought that I was very in to it and the white team needed me to make it fair. So I ended up on the White Mitzvos. Now Lily and I are on different teams.

Wednesday morning after I had just finished getting dressed Lily walks into my room, not an unusual thing, but the conversation that in-sued was out of the ordinary.
Lily: Is there any blue in you glasses?
Me : Lily, why on earth would there be blue in my glasses?
Lily: Because I want you to be wearing a little blue.
Me: But Lily I am on the white team.
Lily: I am wear a lot of white so it is only fair that you wear some blue.

Soon after arriving at camp I saw Annie's sister, Jessica. She is in Lily's bunk but had not been there all week because she was in the Poconos. During her trip she had bitten Annie's arm, I knew this from Annie's status. Quickly this conversation starts.
Me: Jessica, why did you bite your sister?
Jessica: Well it was a long car ride.
Me: So...
Jessica: I was bored
Moral of the story is boredom is now an excuse to bite.

Jessica and Lily in space helmets.

The Break is Over

So I have taken a break from  blogging for a good part of the summer I am back now. So this summer I am a counselor at Mishkan Israel, Lily goes to camp there. I am there every Friday but this week I was there the whole week because they went on trips everyday since they can't go swimming during the 8 days of mourning. It was also color war this past week.

It has been a rather entertaining of weeks. On Monday we broke out color war, to do it all the counselor had to dress up and hide. I happened to be wearing a clown wig and pirates hat. By the end of breakout three of my campers were crying because they were afraid of me. Clearly a trade mark of a good counselor is hysterical campers.

Tuesday our trip was to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich. If you have ever been to this museum you would know it is not a place for children that are 5 and under. In case I could not figure this out my self, shortly after entering one of my campers(who is one of triplets) turns to me and says "I went here with my mommy and daddy" and her sister chimed in "yeah and we were kicked out." At this point I knew nothing good could come of this trip.

Anyway after a little while we took our group the Torah Tots across the street to a play ground. As soon as we get there the children scatter and I am looking for a bench that has a view of the entire playground. No such luck, so I ended up standing in the center of the playground while another counselor as pushing some kids on the swings and the last counselor was helping a camper on some other piece of equipment.

After a few minutes of counting my 8 campers like a very OCD person I heard loud screaming, the type no counselor ever wants to hear. I look to it source hoping its not a camper and just some other child. Right next to me I do see a camper of mine screaming. She is face down on top of her arm on the ground. This has BAD written all over it. I quickly scoop her up and ask her what happened.

She is grabbing her arm and there the sobs I make out bee sting. This I found confusing it defiantly looked like she trip, but I didn't care about that I just was thinking 'What if she is allergic?' frantically. So I asked a sobbing four year old if she was allergic to bee stings, like she was a reliable source. "No" she said through the tears. Next I asked her to see it, hoping to get a better picture of the damage, but she was stubborn and wouldn't even let me peek.

By now the other two counselors were by my side and one, Chana Mirel took the camper from me. She took our camper across the street to the Museum where the rest of the camp still was. Until snack I was at the playground with now only one other counselor and was down to 7 campers. I had enough time to think about the incident more thoroughly and was pretty sure it was not a bee sting and she had tripped and fell on her arm. Now I felt responsible because in a perfect world I should be able to be in eight places at once and keep my campers from tripping. I was still hoping it was a bee sting because it would probably be less severe of an injury and I would have known I could not have prevented it.

About twenty minutes later Chana Mirel came back with the injured camper and we finally were able to get her to move her hand from her arm enough to survey the damage. There was clearly no bee sting but there was defiantly a bit of swelling and she was still crying. now that my other campers were with the rest of the camp I could go with Chana Mirel and this camper to the bus where there was a first aid kit. We offered her ice first and she wanted nothing to do with it. Next we got out one of those triangular bandages that are in all the Red Cross videos, and we tried to splint her arm but she refused that too. So I became the dummy and Chana Mirel splinted me to show that it was nothing to be afraid of. She still did not want any form of treatment. Anyone who has tried would know it is very hard to reason with a four year old who has made up their mind.

At this point I had to leave since my bus was going the farthest so I do not know what happened next. Two days later though the camper came into camp with a bright pink cast and was very happy about her 'pink arm.'

I am going to call it a nigh and write about the rest of the week another time.
Oh and there is still time to sign up for encampment the deadline is the 6th.