Relax

Yesterday we finished the 2nd session of camp, and it was so incredibly exhausting. I no longer know what sleep is, the only way I function is with tea in the morning and coffee every two hours. I have learned so much this session about how to deal with really difficult kids as well as how to keep going even when I'm dead tired.

This past session was really tiring, not only because I was a captain for our Big Day, but also because we had a lot of campers that required specific attention. The Big Day wasn't completely horrible, but it was a really intense and tiring day, especially since I was a captain. At Big Idea, the Big Day is basically a color war at camp. They divided us into four teams with different colors and had us compete all day in various activities. As a captain, my job was to work with my co-captain on cheers, costumes, materials for the day, and just making sure we had everything organized. That was just on the night before. On the actual day, we went around all of the activities for each hour until they switched, and we did our cheers and encouraged our group of 25+ campers as they competed to win. During the day, we also had to make sure that the teams going to each activity were organized and had counselors to go with them. Basically, captains are unit heads for a day and they have counselors and CITs (counselors in training) to help them with the various things going on during the day. The most important thing that a captain has to have is energy and enthusiasm, two things that are very hard to have when you are absolutely exhausted. At the end of the Big Day, I felt like a zombie. No voice, no energy, and all I wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. Overall, it was a really good experience, but I hope I never have to do it again because it just takes everything from you.

My workshops this session were so much easier than last session. I really felt confident in what I was teaching and the way I taught it. The only difficult thing was that I had a few campers that required really specific attention, but thankfully, Most if the other campers in my workshops were completely independent, which was really great.

My group this session was also good, but it wasn't the same as last session. Last session I had a lot more English speakers that didn't understand Hebrew, but this session I only had one girl. This meant that a lot of the campers spoke a lot of Hebrew and it was hard for me to make personal connections because some of my campers would only talk to my co in Hebrew. My co this session was the same as the last, and this session with him was ever better than the last. I hope that we are together again for the third session so that we can finish out camp together, but I'm not expecting anything.

After the session ended, we had this really amazing beach party that was super nice and chill. I also stayed with s few friends and we had a nice relaxing day in Netanya where we just ate, shopped, and saw a movie. Fun fact, during a movie in Israel, they have like a six minute break in the middle of the movie so people can go use to restroom and get more food. My fellow American counselor and I were so shocked because they don't have this in the US and it was so weird to us that they have a designated break.

I'm pretty happy that we have one more session left, but I also can't believe that in about two weeks I'll be back home to normal life. I seriously can't imagine not being with the staff anymore, it's going to be so weird.