Shalom, Gurim parents!
We just can’t believe that the last week of camp is almost over! Yesterday was packing day, and today all of the chanichim (campers) are heading back home. It was a fantastic summer full of so many fun and exciting activities! But before they go home, we still have a lot of awesome things to tell you about from what we did this week-
On Wednesday, we had our first day of Maccabiah! We had tons of fun competing in different games like HaRucah Noshevet (Where The Wind Blows) and Horse Races. We loved seeing how everyone got so very engaged and had a lot of Yachas Tov (good sportsmanship) to the opposite team. For peulat erev (evening activity) we had chidon (trivia) where our campers showed us how much they learned during the summer.
Thursday and Friday we kept Maccabiah going. We had a bunch of different activities like sivuv sports (sports round), where the chanichim went around camp competing in different sports games, Machane race, Dizzy Izzy and pegishot peluga (team meetings). After all of the competitive energy that flown around camp, we gathered all together in the Beit Am for our last Kabbalat Shabbat (shabbat prep). We went into Shabbat as one big machane.
Shabbat was great as usual. We spent our time playing sports, swimming, davening all together and hanging out with friends! At the end of Shabbat, we had a quiet zemirot, and a unique Havdallah to symbolize going into Tisha B’Av.
On Monday we had our last day of Maccabiah. After a short break for Shabbat and Tisha B’Av, we right back for a crazy day. The last day of Maccabiah always features one of the biggest events of camp – Ha’Mirutz Ha’Niflah! This is a rally race that every single chaninch, chanicha, madrich and madricha takes part in! The whole race is about an hour and a half to two hours long. Everyone gets a mission to do and a person in camp that they need to tag to do the next mission. It always invulves silly and fun missions nd everyone had tons of fun taking part in this race. At the end of the race, Plugat Nistar won the race and got a lot of points for it, but everyone had a blast a showed a lot of yachas tov.
We kept the day going, walking into the camps play. All of the campers that chose drama as their chug (elective) showed us how talented they are and put on a great show!
We ended the day with the closing events for Maccabiah. At the tekes (ceremony), both teams showed us what they learned about their reka (background) for their team names. They put on some skits, songs and dances that represented a lot of the aspects of the meaning behind their teams. After that the teams exposed the shelatim (signs) that they worked on. Those too were very beautiful and we could see how much thought got into them. After that both teams performed their shir pluga and shir chasidi (team song and Jewish song). After both teams showed us all they got it was declared that pelugat Nistar won Maccabiah! All the chanichim had a blast taking part in this crazy week! we had a lot going on but now we are ready to pack up our stuff, just before we go home.
We had a great time in Kayitz 2019!!
Ofer and Jennie
