Canada Day, Yom Israel Day and Independence Day Week (+photo link)

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on sunday (july 1st) there was canada day (appearantly that's how they call their independence day) which was pretty uneventful exept for some canadians walking around camp with flags/flag colors, and at night i stayed up very late to preper my lecture for yom israel (or yom israel day, as some people here like to distort it 😊 which was on monday (july 2nd) - a day in camp that's dedicated to isreal. most of my time working on it i spent battling with the useless pieces of junk that around here they call 'computers', and one of which even destroyed my cute mp3 player. on monday we had an israeli lunch (falafel) and after it all of the electives were about israel. i did one about sderot and the music that came out of it (i lectured and played music from the computer...) - overall it was ok, didn't have any problems, only most of my class seemed more tired than interested (but a few days later somebody came to me and said that he really liked it, so i guess not everybody fell asleep 😊. afterwards me and the other 2 security guards did an elective about our army
experiences, we mostly answered questions so it was pretty light and we didn't have to work about it at all... after dinner us 6 israeli deligation members performed in front of the camp with some israeli songs (that was quite successful), and at night we had an israeli dance party but for some reason almost all of the campers left after about 2 songs...
on wensaday (july 4th) i pretty much had a baby's schedule - after doing a night shift i spent most of the day sleeping, and much of the rest of it eating. since it was july 4th (the american independence day) we had a BBQ dinner where i ate chicken, about half a watermelon and 3 pieces of steak (at least that's how they called it - it was too lousy to be called a steak) - i slept through lunch so i was hungry... when i did one of my night tours i saw 2 of the israeli faculty families having another BBQ outside their cabin, so i stayed and ate a little more 😊 ... then they did some song and trivia competition - overall there weren't too much independence festivities (maybe i just
slept through most of them). on thursday morning (shaharit) i read the torah for the first time since my bar-mizva. i can't read the trops (te'amim), but most of the people that read here can't so i just read it clearly (the entire service was lead by a guitar player-singer and everyone who had a guitar was invited to bring it and to play together. it sounded more like blues than prayer...). i got some compliments about my reading afterwards, partly because appearantly it was fast for them (and i really didn't try to hurry...).
friday night (kosher chicken) was nice, got some compliments about my sharwal (appearantly it's pretty rare in the u.s.), and at night we had really cool night snacks for the staff (icecream, fruit&chocolate...). after it i joined a group that sat around a table - me and another young staff member, 2 faculty israeli women and 4 older americans - as 2 of them played the guitar (an aging hippi woman and the guitar & harmonica player that lead the shaharit on thursday) really well, we sang some jewish-reform songs and some oldies into the night... then i had a night shift that went well for 2 reasons : i did a good deed by helping 2 guys that stayed up late to move chairs to preper something for the next day so they could finally go to sleep at 5:30 am, and i found some hummus in the fridge (: ....
link to my flickr photo album:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7312110@N08/

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