Trip Day and Trip Planning

This afternoon, half of the camp left for an overnight trip; tomorrow, the rest of camp will also be gone, so we faculty essentially have 1 1/2 days off-- pretty good since we've only done 1 1/2 days of work so far!

On full days, we teach from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 with a lunch break, so we work pretty hard. Fortunately, we teach different things throughout the day, so we don't get bored. I've been having a great time teaching various units-- youngest unit is learning about mitzvot-- Shabbat, mezuzah, and so on; the middle units are learning about sacred space. One of the older units is learning about Israel-- I'm doing a course on Israel through film, eg., The Syrian Bride and The Lemon Tree. They're loving the films. For the other older unit, I'm teaching about what we were learning at the farm-- peah--the Jewish obligation to leave the corners of the field for the poor. There's a small garden here that is reminding me alot of the farm in terms of the crops that are planted there-- tomatoes, squash, herbs, eggplant, peppers-- and it'll be a useful little space to talk about peah and what it might teach us.

Tonight, a bunch of us are headed to a local dive to watch the All-Star Game. I love camp!

This afternoon with our first half-day off, Lys and I had fun planning for the first part of our driving trip. We were able to find a hotel in Keystone, SD (near Mt. Rushmore), a hotel for one night in Cody, WY (near Yellowstone), and then a campsite in Yellowstone (yeah!!). We really weren't sure what we'd find at this late date, and we're thrilled with what we've found. We'll continue working some more tomorrow on our itinerary-- so much fun!