Sleep away camp is a place where you leave home and travel to new places. This is where the excitement begins. In my experience, you go to places like Maine and Yosemite. There are many different types of sleep away camps, religious ones and athletic ones, random activities that end with s’mores every night.
Sleep away camp is a place where you make friends that last, memories that you cherish and even a girlfriend or boyfriend. You learn to be yourself, get treated equal as everyone else and a safe place to be who you want. A camp I go to is called Tawonga, a religious camp but you don’t need to be jewish to go. They accept all people. I go for three weeks, where every morning we sing the prayer for breakfast, then we go and do activities like arts and crafts and swimming and then after lunch we go to our bunks and sit and play games for an hour. Sometimes we get to go and do any of the activities that are open, this is called floats. Sunday morning we get to eat bagels and cream cheese and sugar cereal like frosted flakes, fruit loops, and captain crunch. This is my favorite meal. Then we go and do torah service where we sit and do prayers for an hour. We get our own cabin mascot and rhyme. We can challenge other bunks to play sports and there is one where we get to eat ice cream and talk. When you get dropped off you can get driven by your parents or ride a bus. If you take the bus the staff sings a song to you when you get off the bus and sings it when you leave.
There is also a trip where you go to a location and hike and then sleep under the stars for two days. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. All the stars glistened with the big dipper and Orion’s Belt making it feel like the most magical place. My first time at camp I was included, I made tons of friends and had the most fun I have probably ever had. My second time at camp I was sad because my old staff was different but I grew to like it and had a lot of fun hanging out with my friends and playing sports. Camp is a place for joy and fun where you are treated as you want to be treated not how others want to be treated. To me, camp is a place where you leave behind your home and go to a place where people will treat you like family and laugh together and run together and live together. There are some camps that aren’t for you and aren’t for me but you need to find the right one for me, it’s camp towanga and the people who work there live there and have fun with no cares but what’s for dinner and what is the schedule. Camp is fun and adventurous and carfree. Camp is a second home.
