By Ari Kalfus

Communications Specialist

Shalom, GUCI family! One of the highlights of a summer at GUCI is the two times a session when your cabin has Bunk Night. They are always surprises; counselors break Bunk Night to their campers in various ways, but usually in a seemingly real skit of one form or another. One group of counselors this summer broke bunk night to their cabin by plastic sword fighting on the Migdal!

During Bunk Night, cabins spend an entire evening solely with each other. They eat burgers grilled by their counselors at grills located around camp specifically for Bunk Nights. While chaveruyot (cabin program time) are moments for small, incremental developments to a cabin’s theme, Bunk Night is the time for large, bounding leaps in theme development. For example, when I was a camper, my cabin’s theme was “The Marksmen.” We spent our chaveruyot practicing different martial/spy abilities such as army crawling and directing each other with hand signals. On Bunk Night, we had to get from the sports field to the Chadar Ochel (opposite ends of camp) without anyone noticing us. Everything we had learned during our many chaveruyot throughout the session came into play.

Last week, I followed Cabin 14 around on their Bunk Night, capturing the evening with photographs with the intention of sharing their night with you. Their cabin theme is “On Strike,” and the counselors found wys to creatively include this theme in the evening’s activities. While many staff members do fill every minute of Bunk Night with programming and cabin bonding activities, many also leave chunks of time with nothing planned, leaving the campers to do what they want (as long as they stay in a certain area!). Cabin 14 was one of the latter cabins.

I agree with their decision; as a camper from Cabin 14 expressed to me, Bunk Night is the only major time at camp when cabins can spend an entire evening solely with each other, and not with the rest of the unit or camp. Campers want to hang out with each other, and chunks of free time during Bunk Night allow exactly that. While one counselor prepared the grill and coals for dinner and another was away preparing a later element of their Bunk Night, the third counselor and the campers played frisbee, human bowling (strike!), and just sat around chatting and joking with each other. From my time as a camper, I can say that while I (fondly) remember exciting Bunk Night programs, such as the time we snuck across camp with our counselors or had to answer a series of riddles and other challenges in order to earn forks to eat a pie we had “stolen” from the Chadar Ochel (dining hall), the best memories I have at camp are the times when I sat with my cabin mates and counselors, talked, and enjoyed each other’s company.

But, the Cabin 14 counselors did also have activities planned. While the burgers were cooking, two of the counselors grouped the campers together and handed them a slip of paper. The counselors said they would not be speaking or directing from that point on; once the campers read the slip of paper, the counselors would just follow them around. The slip read only: “Here between stages new and old, you will find a clue to the City of Gold.” It was time for a treasure hunt! (They were striking out on an adventure!)

After a long hunt that included a break for dinner, the campers finally arrived at the Beit Am. After a bit of searching, they discovered pieces of gold! (They struck gold!)

The gold had writing on it, and when they organized the rocks, it revealed another riddle, leading them back to their cabin. When they arrived, they noticed something was missing…their cabin mascot! (Their mascot was one of the camper’s large water bottles…No, I don’t understand it either. Below is a picture.)

After this twist was revealed, the campers returned to their Bunk Night area for a desert of banana boats (banana, chocolate, and marshmallow wrapped in tin foil and melted together over a fire). After desert, the campers discovered their mascot in the middle of the gaga pit! They then held a gaga tournament to earn their mascot back, and ended the night with showers and bed.

This is just one example of a GUCI Bunk Night, but it holds elements typical of all Bunk Nights. Grilled burgers, cabin bonding activities and free time, s’mores or banana boats for desert, and memories that you will treasure for the rest of your life.