Being an Israeli at camp? It’s weird… mainly because theoretically you’re supposed to know everything. Supposed to know all the songs, and all about being Jewish and all about camp. But it’s still your first summer at camp and you have no idea what’s happening.

It’s an amazing experience, on the one hand you have no idea what’s going on all the time and how to react to things. On the other hand, you’re leading this group of kids that have probably been going to camp for about 5 years and know everything, but you just fall in love with these kids. No matter how much they told us about camp, or how many questions we asked, nothing can really prepare you for this place.

I remember when I first got here, for the first week or so everything was just strange, I had so many confused question marks and somewhere is the past three or so weeks they all disappeared because that’s what camp is all about. It’s about things you’d never do anywhere else, it’s people you feel way too comfortable with, it’s things you never thought you’d do.

In some ways camp is a bubble, closed off from the outside world, even when talking about it we called it “the real world,” so we have life at camp and life in the real world. Camp is definitely better than the real world, starting with the fact that you can wear whatever you want and no one cares, you can wear the same outfit twice and that’s totally fine, because nobody cares. This is truly a safe place, without judgment or fear, where we get to be the best version of ourselves.