Lots of staff including waiters, canteen workers & general managers were up all Motzei Shabbos night preparing for visiting day.
This morning there was a bedside inspection in honor of visiting day. Shachris followed in the Shul. After breakfast there was a raffle for the fantastic stereo system. The winner was Camper Daniel Amishay from Bunk Yud-Tes.
Though visiting day didn’t “officially” start till 12:00 noon, many parents and visitors actually began arriving much earlier. The carnival people began setting up for the visiting day carnival during Shachris.
Today’s visiting day will go down in history as one of the nicest ever, for many reasons. Firstly there was a great carnival with games, slides, moonwalks and more. The carnival went on for 6 hours from 12-6. Secondly the amount of visitors was enormous.
The visitors came from a record 6 countries, Israel, Latvia, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong, USA & 17 states, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina & of course New York. Amongst the hundreds of visitors that came were many prominent Shluchim from around the world, including Rabbis’ Pinny Andrusier, Mendel Lipsker, Shea Harlig, Alter Tenenbaum, Yossi Shemtov, Yitzchok Newman, Leibel Shapiro, Mordechai Avtzon, Mordy Einbinder, Moshe Spalter, Ari Raskin, Yehuda Shemtov, Yisroel Rubin, Gershon Grossbaum, Yanky Saacks, Benzion Friedman and many others. There was a line of cars stretching from in front of camp caretaker Eric Taylors’ house till after “Turkey”!
In typical Gan Izzy fashion the rain made a few brief appearances during the day, B”H it was just drizzles & the carnival for the most part was not affected.
As visiting day was coming to an end, campers were seen shlepping bags and bags of nosh & other goodies, back from their day out of camp.
The canteen closed early tonight, after a very successful day B”H.