Did you guys know that Camp Tawonga is making a movie this summer? Yeah, a movie! It's going to be a promotional DVD all about camp that we show at slide shows, and put in the mail to folks from out of town who can't make it to a slide show. The exciting part is that all of the footage will be captured at camp NEXT WEEK during session 4!

Pictured here are Israeli shaliach Nadav and Liz Nord, our filmmaker. Liz is a documentary filmmaker-to-watch, whose film Jericho's Echo: Punk Rock in the Holy Land screens in Berkeley at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this week!

This morning, moms and dads and sisters and brothers and dogs all waved goodbye (and kids all cheered) as Session Four boarded the busses for camp! Have a great session you guys! More on Session Four campers as camp unfolds...

Bruchim habayim la mishlachat ha kitz ha Noar L'Noar m'Yisrael!

(WHAT?!!!)
Okay if you don't speak Hebrew, then here's what that meant:

A big welcome to this summer's Teen to Teen delegation from Israel!

We are so excited to welcome this year's group of teens - EIGHTEEN OF THEM!! - from the north of Israel. Some are from kibbutzim, some from moshavim and some from the "big cities" of Kiriat Shmoneh and Metulla.

This is our third year bringing teens to Tawonga from Israel with the help of so many donors, foundations and friends in our community. This program helps us infuse camp with an Israeli spirit, an international flavor and even more excitement for teens who are learning about the world from the fun of their own bunks at camp.

This weekend, the Noar teens toured San Francisco with a crack team of counselors and staff. We checked out the Golden Gate bridge, Chrissy Field, Union Square, Chinatown, the Embarcadero, the Marin Headlands and Haight street...plus we packed in an amazing Shabbat dinner and rockin' song session with Isaac Zones at Josh and Sharon Weinberg's home. We can't wait to check in on our chaverim chadashim (new friends) at camp!

At 7:00am this morning the boys of Carmel (B-1 & B-2) were very eager to load up the trailer with their backpacks, jump in the vans with their counselors and backpacking trip leader, and have their drivers drive them to the trailheads in Yosemite National Park where they will hike a few miles into their campsite.

Tonight Camp Tawonga is celebrating its 80th birthday with a party on the basketball courts. Campers enjoyed the ice cream, Tawonga trivia, and dance music into the night. They also honored Tawonga alumni, especially these staff and campers from the 1980s who joined in the night’s festivities.

Cabin G-6 was showering and changing clothes from a fun filled days of activities, when I happened upon them. They dragged me into there bunk to tell me all about their overnight backpacking trip tomorrow, which they are so excited about! I took this crazy picture on my way to dinner, I hope they make it to dinner on time and aren’t late! Tonight is International Dinner, my favorite, where staff make different food from around the world. It is a meal no one wants to miss, especially G-6!

Garey, Jim, and Kathi from have donated a wonderful new irrigation system to the Camp Tawonga garden. They were here today working with Tawonga staff to install the new irrigation system which will help the garden and community grow and blossom.

With the weather comfortably warm and sunny, the morning was amazing time for me to be out of the office and enjoy what Tawonga has to offer. It was morning of arts & crafts, football, high ropes, facials, singing, skit practice, cooking, and kickball slip and slide (where campers slid into home plate). All of camp was in great spirits, excited about the beautiful day and the evening’s festivities.

The oldest boys hit the ropes course today. Here they are doing a trust activity in which eveyone in the group literally has to pull his weight in order to lift everyone off the ground at once. Everyone supports the group.

Can you believe these campers?! They're almost done with the 600 page books they got just this weekend! Harry is everywhere - at the pool, at rest hour, at today's luau...what will all these campers do when they're done reading? Oh wait, maybe they'll write home!

For an exciting and fun change, I get the joy of leaving the San Francisco office behind and have fun at camp for a week! After being serenaded by the portable dance party girls on the porch of the camp office this morning, we all moved to the pool area for a Hawaiian lunch with swimming after lunch. I was able to enjoy lunch with ladies in cabins G-7 through G-10 where the hot topics of the day were learning how to play cards and the new Harry Potter book. The directors were out in force showing us all how people really dress in Hawaii. It has been an amazingly fun day and I am looking forward to Shabbat tomorrow!

Here it is folks! The Portable Dance Party. They go anywhere and make the dance party happen. I captured these snaps in a rare moment of stillness, just before these party animals bolted towards the staff office to bring some of their wild times to the poor, desk-bound office staff.


This activity was the product of one of our holiday blocks described in my last posting. These girls ran all over camp with their counselor Kiki and Shira, the Spielberg Fellow. Spielberg Fellow? Yes. That Spielberg? Yes. Shira has received training in creating intensive theater laboratory style blocks, utilizing creative writing exercises to generate material for performances. If you have a child who enjoys experimental theater, make sure they check her out.
As for the rest of us up here...we are ready for Shabbat. It has been hot, hot, hot. Luckily we have a huge pool, which has been in heavy demand, and the middle fork of the Toulumne River runs through the side of our property and is amazing for swimming or just lounging in the shallow pools. Today we had a Luau Lunch at the pool complete with teriyaki chicken breasts and tofu, grilled pineapple, orange and papaya slices, rice and lemonade. There was music and swimming.
Shabbat is right around the corner, and with it comes the Saturday Shabbat program. This week's focus is on Social Justice issues, such as poverty and homelessness and animal rights among others, and what the kids can do about these issues at home. This Saturday is also our camper talent show, where our young virtuosos get a chance to wow and amaze their peers with acts ranging from gymnastics to songs to piano to skits.
While the talent is brightening up the stage, the kitchen will be abuzz while staff prepare their favorite recipes for Sunday night's International Dinner! I am making Korean BBQ Beef and I know that their is Caesar Salad, Vietnamese Spring Rolls, Noodle Kugel, and Thai Iced Tea. I am hungry just thinking about it. More to come soon. Jordan

Israel Day was this Sunday at camp! Lots of great activities, special Israeli foods, Hebrew singing and more made camp a fun new adventure! Here are some shots from the evening program which included storytelling, singing, skits, and dances...not to mention a few hilarious Napolean Dynamite take-offs!

The FIRST EVER Camp Tawonga Alumni Reunion Weekend is September 30th - October 2nd. Members of the Tawonga Alumni Association met on Sunday to plan the exciting new camp weekend. Ira, Adam, Sarah, Melinna, Steve, Sam, Nina, Ryley, Deb, Monica, Eric, Amy, Ben, and I had a fabulous time reuniting and catching upon old times. Many of us were at camp at the same time and we had many different connections (Adam was Ira’s counselor). We had fun playing with Sam and Sarah and talking about the S & G show (though we weren’t able to see the recording studio). The Alumni Weekend will be an amazing weekend full of more reminiscing, traditional camp activities, and looking at how we are taking “Tawonga” out into the world. Sign up now for the Alumni Weekend and join the Alumni Association!

The block is called holiday. It is run by our drama department and it has quickly become one of the camper's favorite activities. It is a two-part activity, the first for planning and the second for execution. The kids invent their own holiday, something that is meaningful for them as a group, princess day, punky-monkey sweet day, frosted costume day, and candyland independence day to name a few. They create tradiditions, costumes and foods to accompany their day, and then they celebrate the holiday the second block.

It did not elude the boys of B-5 that this year, Camp Tawonga is celebrating its 80th year of life, and in observance of that milestone, the boys decided that their holiday would be Tawonga's Eightieth Birthday Celebration. They decided not only to plan a block for their bunk, but they have included the entire unit in their holiday. Fun times.

The older units will be starting their Livnot Sunday. Livnot are workshops that are intended to give the campers skills while they have an incredible time. They are led by specialists and counselors and some of the Livnot being offered this summer include: Pottery, A History of the Native People of this Area, A Ropes Course Leadership Training, A Theater laboratory, and a Stomp Livnot, inspired by the musical hit. I am jealous.

More to come.
Jordan

There is nothing like the song session of the first dinner of the session. During dinner, the kids were all trying to speak to their bunkmates and to the people at the three or four surrounding tables at the same time, and sometimes they remembered to eat. Returning campers quickly remembered the in and outs of family style dining, while new campers acclimated to the eating with thirteen other people, the long tables, the platters of food, the hoppers and setters. The eating was fun and the food was great (chicken breasts, rice, spinach, salad), but the magic happened a little later. Ken led the dining hall through clearing and the Birkat Ha'mazon, then turned the microphone over to Gal and Jonathan, our songleaders.
The busses arrived and the kids stumbled out, bent and sore from the long bus ride. They had worries on their minds: what cabin they'd be in and with whom, and how fast they could grab their luggage from the field and hurl it onto a bed in the cabin to claim it, and who if anyone, was going to be there from last year or the year before, or who, if they were new, would they meet. In the space of two hours they met their bunkmates and their counselors, took a tour of camp, retrieved their belongings, played a name game and a cooperation game, met their unit heads and unit counselors, and talked to the nurse and learned about the infirmary (we might be calling it the health house now, I'll check on that and get back to you). Dinner was the first time for them to just sit down and look around at the swarm in the dining hall, to feel the energy, to really get the feeling of camp, and nothing gives campers the felling of being at camp like the first song of the first song session of the session. It is always the same song. It is as much a part of Tawonga as the Ga-Ga pit, Arts and Crafts, and the river. It is as exciting to hear the song for me now as it was when I was a camper.
"Country roads...take me home...to the place...I belong...Camp Tawonga...California...Take me home...oh, country roads." The words were shouted more than sung. We insist that all campers keep both feet on the floor during song session, but it was obvious to see that the campers were having trouble staying on the ground. They danced in place. They formed trains that snaked in and out of the tables. They clapped and shouted and hugged. They sung and spun and skipped.
And now we are off and running. Tonight is clearing house and by tomorrow morning when the kids wake up, they will have full schedules hanging from the door, stuffed with fun activities and future memories.

We caught these shots of boys in B-1 and B-2 relaxing at rest hour the other day.

These campers came back from their successful backpacking trips over the weekend. B1 walked out of camp an hour up river, and B2 hiked to Preston Falls on the Early Intake trail. Max said that backpacking was his favorite activity so far even though he got some loving from the local mosquitoes . . . check out that smile on his face!

Here are some B2 boys relaxing on a bunk in their cabin!

And finally, here are some B2 boys playing ping pong. The hilarious thing is that in one photo (and bunk), we have 3 Elis! The Elis are joined here by a Ben and a Jeremy.

Last night, Friday, I joined the CITs and SITs for their Kabbalat Shabbat service. Led entirely by the IT’s, this was a moving, funny, engaging service and I found myself thinking how fortunate Camp Tawonga is to have teens such as these stepping up the ranks to be future counselor’s, specialists and wilderness leaders. The theme of the evening was TIME, past present and future. Each IT led some part of the service, thrilling us with a song, wowing us with a teaching, or engaging us in an activity.



Many knew traditional blessings so we sang those too. A small group led us in writing Haikus about time. Here are two written by CITs: Ben Rego “It is a river, it is flowing endlessly, forever and always” Shayna Brown “Time’s like cherry pie, set in a window to cool, stolen if not watched.” As dusk turned to night Devorah taught us about the Ma’ariv Aravim prayer, we closed our eyes and welcomed Shabbat among friends.



Deborah Newbrun

Director

Yesterday was Shabbat, and boy did we observe it! Shabbat at Camp Tawonga begins on Friday night (which doesn't make it any different from anywhere else, it just helps to say that for the story's sake) with our Kabbalat Shabbat services. Each unit (four bunks of similar ages, two boys and two girls) gather together and join in traditional songs and prayers such as the Sh'ma and Barechu. In addition, each bunk is given a theme to explore before the service, and given the task of presenting something back to the group on their theme during the service. Following the services, the bunks head back to their cabins and have a discussion and debrief the week they have had together and further explore the theme of shabbat. Saturday morning the camp had a sleep-in buffet breakfast with eggs and bagels and cereal. The Saturday Morning Torah service is held at our outdoor chapel called Makom Shalom, or, "Place of Peace." At this service the whole camp joins together in prayer and song, and our third year counselors take the Torah portion for the week and create a skit, usually combining pop culture with Torah themes. The day is relaxing and fun and features floats, free swim, and a Shabbat program that introduces Jewish teachings in creative ways. Lunch is a buffet and dinner is a barbecue with the special treat of sodas for drinks. The day closes with a camper talent show, this year filled with amazing acts including songs, acrobatics, skits and dances. The kids cheer each other on and the ones who perform leave the stage with huge smiles on their faces. The night is concluded with a Havdallah service once the first star can be seen in the sky. The braided candle is lit and then extinguished in the cup of wine (or a non-alcoholic stand in) to signify the week's end. Sunday morning, the camp wakes up at the normal time, and the week begins again.