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.

New Look

I have been slacking off lately. I find it harder to blog now that it is summer. I had gotten into the routine of blogging when I came home from school, but now I no longer have a routine I never remember to blog. Also I would like to get some guest bloggers if anyone is interested.

I am sure you have all noticed the new appearance of the blog, I am still messing around with it. I am not sure if I like it though its very different and I will probably have to get used to it but I think that it represents the blog better. I would really appreciate some user input.

Lastly thing I want to but in this post is about USY Facts. There is currently a goal of 1,000 fans before IC. This is only possible with your help, so if you haven't become a fan yet go do it and everyone should get there friends to become fans. Also today is day 181 of USY Facts, there is a video contest for the 200th day. Please submit videos, they should be around 30 seconds and could be about just about anything USY. There will be a prize.

Flashback: Assassin Game

Congratulations to NoriAnna on getting engage. Nori was A USYer in Hagesher and was an adviser for BEKI-BJ. She continues to staff Hanefesh regional events and is an amazing person.

Nori in Harry Potter World at IC '10

The story I am going to tell today has Nori in it.

One of the things I want to do now that I am on REB is try to go to other chapters' events. The first chapter event from a different chapter than mine was BEKI-BJ's Shabbaton. 

On Saturday afternoon I was with a few people when my friend Aaron suggested we play a game of assassin. We soon started to get other people involved. Someone who was not playing set the game up for us. During sudat shlishit we were assigned targets. 

Right before people started to get names I went back to my bunk to get a sweater. On my way back someone named Jake asked me is I was Joan. I said yes. He said that he had something really important to tell me. 

He quickly whispered in my ear "Bang bang, you're dead."

I looked up at him and replied "you know the game hasn't actually started yet, right?"

I soon received my target. After Havdalah the game began. I was practically untouchable because I knew who had me, but I couldn't figure out how to get my target out. After breakfast Sunday morning the opportunity presented itself, we were walking back to the bunk more than 10 feet from anyone else.

I whispered in to my target's ear "Bang bang, you're dead." I than found out my new target was Aaron, not hard, I already had a plan. 

Then Jake left early, which I figured that meant I would automatically be the winner as long as I killed everyone else off. So when Nori asked me to stay with her because Aaron had her as a target and I didn't have a problem staying with her because I knew she didn't have me. I told her about how I was Jake's target and he had left early.

Nori turned to me and said "Jake was my target so if he left you are my target now. Bang bang, you're dead." Though I was dead I did not want to see Aaron win as he had said he was going to win. 

Nori and I started thinking. While we went through a list of different plans. In the end another staffer asked to talk to Aaron about what he thought of the event. After they were done Nori came from behind Aaron and "killed" him, and one the game.

Nori than came up to me and said "Thank you for helping me relive my childhood"

Updates!!!!!!!!!

Today was my first day volunteering at my little sister's  day camp. I was a junior counselor for a group of seven girls ages 4 and 5. Very exhausting.

I really just wanted to give a quick update on some things. First if you haven't yet sign up for encampment you can get the application from the Hanefesh facebook page or if you are from a different region check out your region's website.  Next thing is you can start registering for IC, right now you can put down a $300 deposit to reserve a spot and if you do it before September 10th you can get $50 off, find out more about that at usy.org. Last thing is everyone should sign up for Kesher, you can do that at konectkesher.net.