Better than the back of the cereal box
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8/18/03:
So, camp�s gone, summer�s on its way out, and I�m in Santa Barbara getting the God. I�m at a two-week Jewish thing called Heritage Retreats which has been absolutely phenomenal. It�s an Orthodox program designed for college/professional age guys who don�t really know what Judaism is all about with the intention of explaining to them that really, it�s all about Torah. So considering I really know that already, I�m a step ahead of the game. :-) Actually, I�m a few steps ahead since I know Hebrew and can read Talmud and have a lot of knowledge that most of the guys don�t, but I�m still getting a lot of good out of this place. I came to get some major question answered, and I�m on my way. There�s a lot of one-on-one time with the rabbis (there�s five, but there are three here I really like � truly, truly brilliant guys), which is like nothing I�ve really been able to get anywhere else. Just grab one of them and sit down to ask them a question, big or small, important or not, aggressive, curious, whatever. I even got one of them to help me re-learn Torah chanting, which I haven�t done since my bar-mitzvah. So I�m feeling good about that. That�s going pretty good so far.
We�ve also had classes every day on all kinds of really great, really pertinent topics. Shabbat, the Oral Torah, love and marriage, intermarriage. And again, I can hardly overemphasize how incredible these three rabbis who give most of the lectures are. They blow your mind how much they know and how great they are at talking to you, and the Australian one just cracks you up all the time. Fabulous. Also the �tutors� are really cool. They�re Orthodox folk around our age (range of 20, plus or minus) who help with studies and also just hang around to be good influences, I suppose. A lot of them are really cool and fun. Some of them are married, some have kids. Many of them were not born Orthodox. Good times.
Besides learning we have a lot of free time. We�re on a giant ranch with ostriches (that was sort of a gratuitous ostrich aside) where we�ve a got a giant hot tub carved into natural stone, and a pool, and basketball, and tennis, and horseshoes, and shuffleboard, and volleyball (I played for the first time ever, and I wasn�t nearly as bad as I thought I would be considering how bad I am at every other sport ever, and I was thrilled), and billiards, and chess, and poker, and scrabble, and balderdash. And more. So it�s good times at the Circle K ranch.
7/28/03:
Well, hello there. Sorry for the long absence from updating (though you shouldn't get used to such regularity, if you had been previously). Around the time I should have been last updating, I was in a bit of a rough spot at camp. I was having a rough day or two with my supervisor sort of crapping on me for things that I felt were not my fault and/or responsibility, and he didn't really see it that way. So work was definitely not going the way I wanted it to, and I was feeling very frustrated, coupled with the fact that I was still not getting to do much work with the kids themselves and was doing mostly administrative stuff, and the "Machon hour" program, which was the educational program for the counselors-in-training, was just in a huge mess, and I was getting some flak for that despite my feeling that I had virtually no control over the situation.
That was the situation for a day or two. As things started to get better, I talked to my mom, and when she said "Just reminding you you can come home any time, we love you, we miss you, etc.," that sort of set off in my brain the idea of going home, which is where I am now. It really wasn't because of camp issues, more just because I really wanted to go home. I thought about the idea that I was going to be home for three days between camp and leaving home again, and I was really bummed about it. So I thought on it for another little while and decided to come home Friday, which I did.
So now I'm home in a new house, because we just moved, and the first day was very weird, because it definitely felt like home right away (which I guess goes to show you that a home is not a physical place but an emotional one), except I didn't know where the light switches were, or the bathrooms, so it was a little jarring. So was waking up in the morning and being completely disoriented since I hadn't established a routine yet that I could do without being totally awake. Bizarre.
So I spent Shabbat at home, and I checked out a local Orthodox (actually Chabad) synagogue that my little brother told me was in walking distance, and I had a really nice time, and I went to a local house for a delicious Shabbat lunch (not like the crap they fed us at camp), and then I relaxed most of the day, and then we had a nice havdallah with my whole family (our first ever, really), and that was swell all around.
Since then I've been unpacking my room, which has been less than fun, but hey, that's whatcha get. Oh, and I also got a bunch of information about my NY job - turns out there's only one other guy out of 18 people on the program. It's going to be an interesting year.
7/15/03:
So second session has started and is going full blast already. By day one you�d already forgotten it was day one. (Day two today.) Eric Linder is my new immediate supervisor, he�s tall and thin and lanky and funny, and he kinda reminds me of me. I like him. We had a really cool prayer service tonight where in addition to the guitars and the bongos (those we have every day) he played sax and I played harmonica and it was really swell.
Also today I got my first real chance to teach when I di an hour program for the counselors in training. It was this bit I have about what makes a good relationship, and I took them onto the ropes course and did the wobbly woozy (it�s this thing with two wires that get farther and farther apart) and we talked and did the wobbly woozy and it reasonably well. I taught them about the wobbly woozy as an analogy for a relationship. Ask me about it sometime, I get very excited about it, and I think it�s really interesting and useful too. It didn�t go as well as I had hoped, but I had also braced myself for much worse too, so on the whole it was good. I asked them at the end for one thing from everyone that they had learned from the experience, and so that was satisfying.
For the first few days of camp there�s this guy here Noam Katz who graduated Brown in 2000, so he was a senior when I was a freshman but I didn�t Noam. (Know �im! Get it?!) He�s big into Jewish music and he�s got an album out and it�s very exciting. He�s actually employed by another UAHC camp (the Reform Jewish camp system) where my buddy Lev works, so that got me all excited. Noam�s great and it�s been really fun having him around.
I got an e-mail today from my friend Sean, a classmate from Brown, who just got a really great job building nuclear submarines after I sent him an e-mail about a job fair and he went and he got a job! That totally made my day today. It was so exciting. It�s in Connecticut and he doesn�t want to go to Connecticut though, he wants to be in New York, which is fine by me, since then I could go hang out with him. Swell.
7/11/03:
I�m at home for intersession. First month is over and I�m trying to relax a little bit, except I have to pack up my room since we�re moving, and I have to pack up a year�s worth of stuff since I�ll be going to New York about three days after I get home from camp for Avodah. I got the job and am in the process of getting the contract all signed. Huzzah! It�s pretty exciting. I�m actually going to California for two weeks before New York on a Jewish retreat program which also promises to be incredible (www.heritageretreats.org) and I fly out from California straight to New York on August 24th. Crazy. I�m exited and terrified and it�s going to be awesome.
The end of the session was a little turbulent. A lot of staff were really itching for the break. We really needed it, and we were all having a lot of bitching sessions. The lack of organization at camp was just getting to us. Also, I realized I really have no job at camp. No, really. If one of the other JET members were to leave, they�d have to hire someone else. But if I left, the other JET folks would just pick up the slack. Mostly I just do a few administrative things and that�s all. It�s quite distressing and rather unpleasant, and I need to find some way to make that not so during second session.
The trip home was fun. I got to be in charge of the buses coming home to Atlanta temples again, and it was a lot easier than the ride up because the kids were all tired from staying up all night. I also had one of the counselors in training with me (one of the btter ones) and so I had some good company, rather than just snotty kids, and I so I had some help too. They haven�t really done much counselory stuff yet, so I just gave him little bits of responsibility here and there as we got going and it was helpful and it was good for him too. So that was good. All in all it was a successful trip, with only 5 pieces of luggage left over at the end and two pieces not found.
One of the other buses, on the other hand, had a major accident on the way down apparently. I haven�t heard much about it yet, but I heard that everyone was fine on our bus. Three people in the other car died though. Yikes. Bad news all around. It was a crazy day at the office. I�m glad I got home early, though I feel bad I couldn�t do anything to help either back at camp or on the bus. I don�t know who was on it (I�m dying for info) but I worry that it was full of stupid staff. So I hope everything was okay.
Here�s hoping for a good second session�
7/6/03:
Still waiting to hear back from Avodah� it�s getting on my nerves now.
I had a nice birthday (Wednesday) where I got a bunch of calls and notes and gifts ranging from a hunk of chocolate to a book I�ve been wanting to read, and my JET buddies (my coworkers) got me a cookie cake that said �Praise the Lord� on it, which was a heck of an inside joke (it comes from that song �I wanna sing sing sing� that is on everyone�s lips now).
Speaking of which, Maccabiah was a blast. It reminded me of good old time when I used to be the idiot running around cheering, but I was a judge this time because I�m upper staff, so that was nice. And the �speaking of which� part comes in because I was parodied in both team skits - doing the same thing of course, singing my signature song. In fact, I was the only person to be parodied in both skits, which is apparently a huge honor. So I�m honored.
Meanwhile, the session is coming to a close. There�s only a few days left, then we get a couple of days off, which I am much looking forward to. I did a prayer service in the woods tonight with the oldest kids who I work with. In theory it�s a nice idea, but the services around here are so watered down and the kids are so not into it that
