By: Jeremy Klotz, Director

It’s hard to believe that Kallah Aleph (first session) is coming to an end this Sunday.  It’s equally difficult for me to believe that I’ve been living at camp for over six weeks now.  Time is a very strange thing at camp.  We do so many activities, programs, special trips, etc. during the session, and nobody can believe that we’ve been here long enough to have done it.  Time files when you’re having fun.  It also flies when you’re working hard to accomplish something for which you have a great deal of passion.

I took some time today and yesterday to reflect on the last six weeks.  This time of the summer is particularly exciting around camp.  Our community is enjoying the fruits of our efforts.   We set out to accomplish a number of goals at the outset of first session.  We want to help kids discover their best selves, and experience Judaism in a profound and exciting way.  We work hard to help kids build very strong relationships with cabin mates and kids in their units by delivering interesting, thought-provoking, skill-building programs.  The campers in Kallah Aleph are at the peak of a unified Jewish community as we head into what will prove to be a fantastic final Shabbat celebration.

Camp is also exciting now because we are starting to turn our attention to opening camp for Kallah Bet (second session).  We know there are 230 kids at home tonight who’ve been out of school for a number of weeks.  Perhaps they’ve done some cool stuff in the interim, or gone on a great vacation with family.  We know, though, that they’ve been thinking about GUCI for weeks now, their excitement building.  They will bring an energy to camp that you can only really understand if you’ve experienced it as a staff member.

Staff at GUCI give their all.  We require it.  It’s not the easiest thing to give your all for four weeks, accomplish goals based on high standards, and then do a hard reset over a 24-hour period that requires us to start all over.  For decades we’ve been successful transitioning from session to session and maintaining our high standards.  This is due, in part, because we hire excellent staff who share the vision we have for our campers’ experience and understand the commitment and effort required to create the community we desire.  It is also because our staff has its own high expectations for the experience they want to have over the course of the full summer.  And, it is due, in large part, to the energy and excitement our 230 Kallah Bet campers will bring to us on Tuesday.  That energy is contagious.  It invigorates us, and motivates us to do our best.

I am very proud of our first session community.  Our campers are having a blast, and our staff is realizing the heights we can reach with focused effort, open minds and creativity.  We will work very hard over the next three days to finish strong.  And while it might be a little bit sad to know we are going to move on from our current cabins and counselor co-groups, I can already feel the buzz starting to build about second session.  We’ve had an amazing time / we’re going to have an amazing time.