17/07/07 - 24/07/07

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I woke up at tuesday (July 17th) evening to see everybody wearing toxidos and fancy dresses - on the last day of camp they have a banquit, a festive dinner with lots of food and a decorated dining room that everybody dress up for (exept me...😊 . The campers were all very excited, they had a closing program at night after which they could stay up all night at the beit-am, and in the morning the buses with the crying campers left us...
On thursday (July 19) the 2nd session campers came to camp together with some new staff members that were fun to get to know. I continued my tradition of taking a walk in opening day and walked to Wawayanda Lake Park (a nice nearby state park, a little more than 30 minutes walk to each direction), and at noon Shaul (my mother's cousin that lives in NJ) came by and took me to (a grest) lunch - we sat at a pub in Warwick and I had amazing steak and fries, and besides it was nice to meet and talk to him.
Saturday (july 21) was fun - lying under the sun with my feet in the pool, and afterwards finally playing soccer - this session was a little more outdoorsy and there were 5 Israeli campers so it was much easier to organize a game. The general level wasn't all that good, but at least this way I could run the entire game without dropping dead... After dinner (well actually 2 of them...) and playing with the kids a little we had another live concert in the beit-am - Rabbi Joe Black. It was just him and his acoustic guitar so it wasn't all that exciting, but you could hear that he's a good guitar player and some of the songs were really cool...
On sunday (july 22) a group of autistic children came here for a week and a group of camp staff and campers (as part of their camp program) took care of them. I didn't have much to do with them, just thought to let y'all know that this also exists in here. I thought that having a jam session eveytime a musical guest comes here would be a good idea, so I asked Joe Black if he wants to, he seemed co-operative so I asked the guy that's in charge of the schedule to announce it and on 23:30 we gathered at the lobby. At the begining we had 2 guitars (Joe being 1 of them), a violin (there's a guy in camp that plays it REALLY well), a darbuka (drum) a piano, and a couple of ppl that just came to listen and sing a little (like me). They played really well together, sometimes just improvising, sometimes playing rock classics - it was good music and I had fun listening. Monday was pretty annoying - it rained heavily the entire (!) day without stopping and since I wasn't in the mood to get wet I pretty much spent the entire day in the main building e-mailing. At night the rain stopped and the Tish'a Be'Av fast began, for the 1st time we had a silent prayer without a guitar. I spent much of the following day sleeping and lied in my bed thinking, had no problems fasting, just took my stomach some time to get back to routine afterwards.
The next couple of days I spent with BatSheva and a guy from couchsurfing on the Appalachian Trail, more about that in my next post...

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