STAFF WEEK! the start.

Okay so these were written this morning and yesterday, so enjoy!

I would be updating my blog right now, but in the cabins there isn’t any wi-fi. I am LOVING the URJ Camp Newman. Literally, its amazing and it’s only been two days. Tomorrow we are going out and hanging out all day in the bay area! I am so excited. Okay, so after all of my crazy plane rides and adventures, I got here in one piece even if my bag did break. I couldn’t really sleep all that much on the plane rides and on the bus to camp. So by the end of the first day I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, which was very exhausting to say the least. I felt like I was on one of those medical shows being an intern working a 48 hour shift or something of that type thing. But let me tell you, those 24 hours have been fantastic. I got to camp and Aaron Gertz (one of my madrachim from EIE) was SO excited to see me! I couldn’t believe how excited he was because he’s so sarcastic and not excited about anything ever. So it was pretty exciting. All the Newman staff heads were wearing these obnoxious yellow polo shirts that say Camp Newman on them. I loved it. I met these two girls from Wisconsin at the airport. They are really nice and friendly like the typical Jewish kids. The first day overall was very overwhelming. I met the songleaders Jeremy Gimbel and Rachel Mylan. I am one of six Rachel’s on staff. It’s Rachel land. Aaron calls me B.Duck (it’s a nickname from EIE) and its starting to catch on a little bit. I got to play some opening songs with Jeremy and Rachel on Thursday which went pretty well. We played Heivenu, and some other good classics. We did a bunch of mixers and getting to know you games to welcome all the new staff members and madrachim. Plus we have a TON of fantastic Israelis. They all are so much fun and crazy. I love it. It’s nice to hear the bad English and Israeli accents. It feels like home again. J We got a tour of the camp which was nice and had dinner and whatnot. I met a bunch of Newman alumni a lot of CITs of 2007 which is my age group. All the people here are so nice. I’ve already fallen in love with this camp. It’s beautiful out here in wine country, my goodness I am digging it. After all of the mixers and programs and what not we got to go to our cabins. Basically we can just sleep where ever we want. It’s really nice to be able to pick your own cabins. I am with most of CIT girls and Jen who went to Kutz with me. We got super hyphy last night which was crazy fun. We did out thizzle faces and passed the thizz. It was fantastic, I was so pumped to get hyphy! Today has been so hectic. So Jeremy Gimbel, the head songleader, had to leave early today because he had to go to his college graduation. Tonight was Shabbat and the first one for us. Rachel Mylan, Brad, Lara, and I lead services. They went pretty well, there were some mistakes and issues but overall they went pretty well. It was nice to songlead at a camp. It was a bit different from songleading in NFTY, but I really enjoyed myself. Then we had Shabbas dinner. We had to rush to get ready for the Shabbat Shira. It was intense planning all day today for shira and services . The songleading office is also fantastic. Since Jeremy is gone, I am the assistant songleader, which is pretty rockin. Songleading at Newman so far has been awesome, but I’ve never been so tired. I am drinking SO MUCH water. I’ve filled my camel back at least 8 times today. From all the singing and hill climbing, mayim is needed. I am exhausted from all this crazyness, but I am having an amazing time. I am loving every moment. I am making some great friends. That’s about it. Hope your Shabbat goes well!


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Yesterday was my first Shabbat at Newman. It was fantastic. Okay, let’ me take it from the top.
I first started off by leading Shabbat Shacharit services with Jake the Rosh T’Fillah. [I think that’s his name] which went pretty well. I was the only songleader which was kind of neat because I got to songlead by myself for the first time. I can’t believe how much songleading I am doing here already. I’ve lead every service and ever song session so far…it’s crazy how much songleading I’ll probably being doing by the end of the summer. PLUS Newman sings so much, its ridiculous, but I LOVE it. Services went really yesterday morning. My fingers are dying, but that’s only because I am not in songleader shape. It will happen soon though. Then we had a day off because some rich family rented out the camp. I went in Aimee’s car with her, Jen, and Morgana. She drives the cutest sky blue bug. I love it, we had the top down. We were so high school. We first went to Ross to go shopping for white dresses. In past years at Newman the whole, wearing white on Shabbat rule was never enforced, but this year Ari Vared [the asst. director] said that it’s going to be enforced strictly. All the girls in my group and Jared went to Ross to go find some white dresses. I was helping out by finding stuff and whatnot .There are some really cute ones that we found. After we went to Ross the Newman staff took us out to lunch at the In and out burger which is world famous. I’ve definitely heard about it on the Food Network. It was cool to have my first In and Out burger. It was crazy packed and filled with all kinds of people. It was really good and very fresh. They call it the “healthy junky food” which might be a tad ironic. After we had lunch we went to Target to shop for some more clothing and cute stuff. Target wasn’t too long of a trip. Then it was getting later, so we went down to downtown Santa Rosa which was really nice. Aaron Sulia showed us around because he knows the area really well. There was an old car show going on so all these hot old cars were driving everywhere. It was really neat. We walked around a bit, and then went to this place to play some pool. We didn’t actually play pool we ended up meeting up with some Israeli staff members and just hung out for a while. Then we left to go to this AMAZING restaurant called Flavor. Aaron said it was one of the best in Santa Rosa. I had gnocchi which was the best I’ve ever had. After our fantastic dinner we headed around and ended up in the mall. There was a Brookstone in there with all different types of massage chairs which was really fun. There was this thing called the “iSqueeze” which focused on your calf muscles, and it was amazing. It felt lovely. After that, we met up with everyone hung around the mall for a while. Took some pictures on the Mac’s in the Apple Store. The apple store there was really tiny. There was not that much space. Then we all decided to leave and go back to camp before it got too late. When we got back I got to help lead Havdallah. Then everyone watched Finding Nemo. It was a really awesome day to have so much time off. We were off from 11am-9pm. Which never really happens at a camp, but we had to leave for the Bat Mitzvah. It’s actually really cold here, which is weird, but overall I am having an amazing time and loving every moment of it!