Another day, another year older

Yes, I had a birthday.

Yes, it was a particularly good birthday.

Why?

No, I didn't get any large and exciting gifts (though the ones I did get were wonderful and thoughtful and fit me well).

I did get to take a trip...to eastern Montana. Hardly the vacation spot of choice, though I enjoyed it.

The best part, though, was that I got to spend it with (almost) my entire family (from my dad's side). I am so blessed by the family God has given me. As far as I can tell, all of them are believers, which gives us another common ground (besides blood).

We went out to Sleepy Hollow, the old homestead, and went for a drive across the rolling hills, roasted wieners and marshmallows over an open fire, talked, and sang worship songs together. Most of us live so far apart and get to see each other so rarely, it was a great blessing for all of us to be together for just a short time.

And now? I head back to Jerusalem in a few more days. I pray that as I go through the year ahead God would help me to grow in knowledge, wisdom, and love for Him.

Why I love where I live

...in no particular order:

1. Wiener roasts in the back "yard."

1a. I get to play with fire!

2. Wild strawberries, huckleberries, and raspberries.

3. Beautiful waterfalls within hiking distance.

4. Rain in the summer, accompanied by rainbows!

4a. It's GREEN!

5. Mountains, 360 degrees.

6. Family.

7. Things to climb on...like grain bins. :)

8. Cute and furry mountain creatures.

...I reckon Montana runs in my blood.

Soak it up

I took the time to take a little walk today, exploring a small meadow near camp. It's a little late in the season for many wildflowers, but there were some.

There was also lots of grass. Have you ever thought about grass? How many different kinds there are? So many colors, so many different shapes on top, some of them so delicate and lacy. Have you noticed how it bends in the wind and changes color as it shifts? Have you noticed how verdant the world looks with a rich layer of grass covering the ground and how barren it looks in the absence of grass? Even brown grass is better than no grass. Do you ever hear the wind sighing through the grass and feel a sharp pang of longing and loneliness? Have you ever noticed how grass is the first thing to come back after a fire, restoring loveliness to a burned and barren land? Have you ever seen grass covering an old ruin, concealing the places where people once lived, loved, worshipped? I love wildflowers, but I'm coming to love grass more and more. Its beauty is more subtle, but can also be more poignant.

It also is incredibly difficult to photograph well.

In addition to the grass I saw numerous bugs, including thousands of mosquitoes with single-minded desire to suck out all my blood. They failed. I also saw this cute little bug. I didn't manage to get a very good picture of him, but he was pretty cool.

Time here is short, both time at camp and time in Montana. I am excited to have a break from camp, and I'm excited to go back to Israel, but I know I will miss so many things here when I leave. Things like flowers, grass, and bugs; mountains, rivers and rain. And of course the people. So for now I'll try to soak up all that I can from my beautiful Montana, and enjoy as much time as I can with my dear friends and family before heading back to beautiful Israel and my other friends there.

Reflections on the end of summer

Here I sit, at my cluttered desk, contemplating the last food order of the season. The summer has gone incredibly quickly, and, at times, incredibly slowly. We've finally come to the end, though, the last week of ten. Staff memebers are starting to leave for sports, school, and jobs. We lost one on Saturday, another on Sunday, and yet another leaves tomorrow.

It's a bittersweet time. I'm excited to have a break. I feel like I've been cooking 24-7 for years now. I will enjoy not always smelling of food. I'm excited to see family briefly after camp. I'm excited to head back to Israel (in a little more than 2 weeks). On the other hand, I'm sad to leave the friends here, many of whom are like a second family to me. I'm sad to leave the sights and smells of camp. This place feels as much like home as any place on earth, and I miss it when I leave. I'm also a bit nervous to get back to Israel...there's a lot I need to do before I'm ready to leave, and a lot I need to do and decide on once I get there.

For now, though, I have about 4.5 days left here at camp and I want to make the most of them.

Yesterday the staff had a little "Cook Appreciation" ceremony and they gave us cards and a little gift. It was nice.

My parents were campers up here last week, so it was fun to hang out with them. We even got to go on a picnic one day. We found a beautiful spot along the river to eat and then explore a little.

omeday I want to come up here with some extra time and just explore EVERYWHERE.

This summer I/we have made, in rough estimates:

- 60 gallons of Granola
- 10,000 cookies
- 80 loaves of Challah
- 1500 hot ham and cheese sandwiches

- 2000 pancakes

We have used (approximately)

- 400lbs of ground beef

- 120 bags of potato chips

- 120lbs of bacon

- 800lbs of shredded cheese

-1000lbs of apples

...and much, much more, obviously.

In addition to "good ol' American food," we have served ethnic foods, which, if not totally

authentic, are at least reminicent of Italy, China, Mexico, Greece, England, and Israel/the

Middle East.

Tonight is a recipe party...all sorts of new favorites. :)

Merry Christmas?

"Christmas?" you say.

"In July?" you say.

Indeed, its is as you say. Christmas in July.

Here at camp we do some odd things. It just so happened that this year we decided to celebrate Christmas on the 25th of July. We are only together as a staff for 10 weeks, none of which include the real Christmas, so it was kind of fun to make-believe together.

It ended up being quite a production.

We warned the staff a couple weeks in advance, and had everyone draw names for the secret Santa gift exchange.

A few days before the big event a few other coordinators and myself invaded the kitchen at odd hours to make cookies and fudge and other delicious Christmas treats.

Friday night we set up the tree. Yes, we had a tree. How did we get a tree? Therein lies the tale... You see, a few weeks back, we had a little, um, incident with a bus. Mmmhmm. Yeah. Let's just say, well, that it prefered to be horizontally possitioned for a time. Anyway, the point is, when it rolled off the road it happened to knock over a relatively small tree. (At this point I should probably note that no one was seriously hurt in the accident. It was bad, but that makes it a little easier to instill some leivety into the situation.) Someone saw the tree and decided that we might as well keep it, so it was brought back to camp and put in some water to save it for Christmas.

So, as I was saying, Friday night we set up the tree. That was a feat in itself, as we were sadly lacking in the tree stand department. We made due with a large pot, several long nails, and some wedges of wood.

After successfully positioning the tree in an upright position, we then managed to find Christmas lights, some of which actually worked. We hung lights on the tree, and then hung icesicle lights outside on the dining room porch.

I have to say, it looked pretty cool. The family campers might have thought we were mildly touched in the head, but they did enjoy the pine-tree scent. Not that the tree was actually a pine, but anyway.

I spent some time finishing my Christmas gift for my "secret Santa" person: an Elijah action-figure. :)

I then finished of the "Christmas Eve" by deciding to make Christmas ornaments only slightly before midnight. Which means I got to bed after 1am. Have I mentioned that I need to be in the kitchen by 6:15 on Saturday? It was a short night, and I didn't even see Santa.

The next day we got the campers all fed and on their way and then we headed into town for a staff trip. I got to see my parents and take a nap and eat a falafel from the Pita Pit, so it was a pretty good day.

We got back to camp around 7 and rushed to get a dinner of BLTs ready. Everyone else rushed to finish and wrap their presents. When people arrived in the dining hall I put them to work hanging my homemade ornaments on the tree. I liked it. We had an enjoyable dinner together, cleaned up a bit, and then gathered around the tree for the festivities.

We opened with Harvey reading the Christmas story out of Luke. We then sang a few Christmas carols before progressing to present opening. As a side note, I have to say it's rather funny and a bit unfortunate how few people know more than one verse to most of the Christmas carols. Oh well.

For presents we ended up passing out one at a time, watching people open them, laughing and admiring, and then finding out who gave the gift. Some of the gifts were quite hilarious. I have to say that I was quite pleased by how well people seemed to like what I gave.

When we finally finished with presents we had Christmas goodies, a sugar cookie decorating table, and apple cider. All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening. Call us crazy, but it was worth it.

Blogging Duties

I have been sadly remiss in my blogging duties. I have some things that I have been pondering that I will try to post on at some point. However, I have so little time, and so much to do...it's difficult to find time to think, much less to write out any thoughts. So here's a brief update on my life, for any who might be curious.

1. I still cook. Lots.

2. I (with my assistants) made 26 loaves of challah bread for steak night this last Friday. Shabbat Shalom!

3. I went rafting on the Stillwater this last Saturday. It doesn't have much in the way of rapids, but there are some fun parts. It doesn't really live up to it's name...especially compared to the Madison. :)

4. So we had some fun water wars, and I got pushed/thrown into the river a couple times. Good times. We also got to eat food that I didn't make, which is always an exciting occasion for me.

5. Someone bought some Rocky Mountain Oysters at a resturant, and I got to try a small bite. Very exciting. It mostly tasted like fried food. Less exciting. But still cool.

6. We are into our second week of family camp. Two Buffet Nights down, three to go. First two actually went quite well, praise the Lord!

7. I have now survived, um...maybe 17 Buffet nights? (in my four years as head cook) and today was the first time that I carved the watermelon for it. It was fun.

8. This week is sort of, "Old Home Week" here at camp. By that I mean that most of the campers have come here for about a million years, and/or have been on staff themselves, or currently have a family member on staff... It should be a fun week.

9. Fire danger is still pretty low! I have high hopes of avoiding changing steak night to prime rib night.

10. I really should go to bed...it's way past my bedtime.

11. I'm pretty much out of random updates anyway. Really, pretty much all I do is cook things. Not that exciting to write about. Especially since most of them are things I've made numerous times before. Sad lack of experimentation. Oh well.

12. I'm looking forward to going back to Israel. Which has also been rendered much simpler, now that I have a visa. Yay!

13. So for now, over and out.

Rainbows and Flat Tires

Here we are, another week drawing to a close. And what a week it's been! Roughly 170 kids here, and, according to my sister, they eat "like banshees on drugs!" I'm not quite sure what banshees eat like, much less how drugs would affect their eating habits, but it is quite certain that these kids do eat a lot. And then, just for fun, they eat some more. There have been times when we've had a hard time keeping up with them...which has made for some stressful moments in the kitchen. But no one has starved to death yet, so I guess I'll consider the week a success.

Yesterday I went to Big T. in the afternoon to mail my visa application, so hopefully I'll get that before I leave again in August. One of the counselors had a pine cone hit his eye that morning, so I also took him in for an eye appointment. His stuff took a lot longer than mine, so I spent a lot of time waiting... Oh well.

That evening I went back to Big T. to go bowling with the children of the crew. That was pretty entertaining...for many reasons. First of all, my van got a flat tire on the way into town. Well, actually, it wasn't just flat. It was shredded. Flat tires are pretty routine on staff trips, but that doesn't make them simple to resolve. We did have a spare with us, but we lacked the proper tools to get it out. When the other van came back for us, they had a spare which we were able to take out and use. However, that wasn't the end of our problems. Both vans had jacks, but neither jack was of the proper height to lift the van off the ground, so we had to use rocks. And, well, to make a long story short, it took some time and ingenuity, but we eventually finished changing the tire and continued on our way. At least we got to see a rainbow as we were working. :)

Once in town we proceeded to their 6-lane bowling alley where we hung out most of the rest of the night. I didn't bowl myself, but I enjoyed watching others bowl. :) And I rather enjoy hanging out with high school kids, so yeah, it was fun. Then we got in the vans to go to the gas station and then home. The other van left before mine. And when we turned the key in ours...nothing. So we opened up the hood to discover that...the battery wire was utterly disconnected. And again we had no tools. So we held the battery wire on the battery while we started the car and managed to make it to the gas station, and eventually home. It was close to midnight when I finally got to bed.

This morning came quite early... As I was running to the kitchen (I always seem to jog places here...walking just is a waste of time) I passed another staff member who pointed up. I looked up and there above the mountains was yet another rainbow.

So to sum up, it's been a crazy week, with lots of ups and downs, joys and struggles. We've had lots of rain, which can make activities difficult. But then, we've had lots of rainbows too - constant reminders that God keeps His promises. Even the trials bring reminders of God's faithfulness.

Bonus: Here's an article from the Jerusalem Post...I found it rather amusing.