Hi, my name is Annika and
I'm in second grade. I'm 8 years old. I'm from the state of California and Glendale.
My name is Mrinalini, and I go to school in New Delhi
My name is Shanti. I am seven and I'm from Venezuela.
I'm Flavia and I'm from San Diego.
I'm Russti. I'm 15 years old and I'm from Kenya.
I'm 14 years old. I'm from Los Angeles.
I'm Abby. I'm 14 years old and I'm from Pennsylvania.
I really like this camp because it helps you learn about God and how to meditate
and it teaches you a lot of cool techniques that you can learn and
I'm really proud of myself for coming.
I really like our meditations. I mean, I don't know if fun is the right word.
They're just very peaceful.
and I think all of us really come out of them feeling very calm for the rest of the day.
With such a large group of people and with the monastic guiding us
it really makes me want to be more motivated to do it regularly at home.
And I think it's a really good program
and learning meditation techniques and connecting with God
and making new friends at this camp, and it's a really nice place to be.
You get to meet new people
and within one day you have all these new friends that you think of as family.
It's a beautiful sacred space where it seems like you can really kind of develop yourself
and you're able to grow your own meditation, but you're also making friends
and it's not this place where I can just play and just kind of decide who I want to be in a way.
It's definitely for me the funnest camp I ever go to
because I can make new friends, and you actually do stuff that's really fun.
It's encouraging. It's a peaceful environment with a lot of amazing spiritual people.
The teachers and the program really helps to convey a lot of the higher parts of SRF
and makes them a lot more understandable for the average teen in America.
And I really feel Master's energy and the rest of the Gurus around here.
I really like this camp because the kids here are just so - they -
most of the kids at my school aren't really spiritual,
and it's amazing to see all these kids who are similar.
They just have more deeper thinking, deeper thinking in every level.
This camp, it's a it's an interesting experience because it delves deeper
into the whole idea of spirituality, and like who we are
and what this path is and what we want to find.
So I like that aspect of it because there's really a conversation that you don't have and
here we kind of this way we get taken out of the whole - the regular world,
the whole day to day habit - you got to get something done. You gotta get something done.
Here we're taken out of that. We're brought here. We're just immersed in our spirituality.
I'm Shilpa and we're from Seattle, Washington
and this is our first time here at the Encinitas Country Day, the camp,
and we are, I mean we love it. It's a pretty amazing.
She, I asked her yesterday what was her favorite part of the day, and I was so surprised
she said it was meditating in the Encinitas ashram in the chapel.
And that was that just - I was just so happy to hear that.
She's - and I said, what did you like about it? And she said it was feeling calm,
it was the, uh, it just made me really happy.
And my seven-year-old, when she says something like that I said
there's definitely an impact that this is having on earth. And the teachers are wonderful.
They're just so loving. You can feel that they care for each and every individual student here.
Well, I like this camp because it's yoga plus fun and it's great to be in it.
It's like a divine camp with lot of fun and the most fun thing is that we went to
Paramahansa Yogananda's house and I felt like in a divine house. It was really a great experience.
There is nothing like this in the entire country, and I know that, you know a lot of families come from everywhere.
So he wants to come here. He loves it. We like it. It's amazing.
This program has helped me just
fulfill what I feel is missing in my life because I live a pretty nice life.
And I have lots of siblings and lots of friends and a good social life,
but I always felt like there was something missing, and this is helping to fill that gap.
And I've always wanted to become closer with God and, you know, Guru.
Well, so we've been talking about relationships be this with you know your family your friends
and this is really helped me with my relationship both with that and my sister
and it's given me a lot of ideas I can take home so it has really nice.
I learned that you can't praise people too much, you have to keep it ... and you have to be sincere
and stuff like that. You have to be thoughtful, sincere, and straightforward.
First, the overall topics about spiritualizing friendships, I find it's pretty cool.
There's a lot of things that I could apply to my real life where it's with either friends or family.
Friendship is like a rose because its bloom is so pretty as friends are.
Friendship is like a rainbow. Each color is a different friend making a bridge
that helps you see the world in a different perspective.
A friend is like a cup of hot cocoa that cheers you up on a bad day
and so enters your life making you feel warm and good inside.
My daughter is 13. This is our first time and we are absolutely loving this camp.
It's just so beautiful.
If there were a school where she could go to high school with something like this,
we would be the first there. (laughter)
Always the week of SRF camp is our most peaceful week of the summer
and I'm really lucky. I don't have to talk my kids into going.
They insist on it and they're not missing it. And I told them when we signed up
we had the opportunity to have a free place to stay in Spain this summer,
but we'd have to go during this week. And both kids said, "No thank you."
And so we skipped Spain. And I was a little sad because of course, I want to go to Spain
but, of course, I was beside myself because
I'd much rather that my kids would like to come to
our temple camp
I'm Craig. I'm from New York City.
This is the first time my daughter Maya is visiting the camp here.
So as soon as the kids finished school, my whole family flew out the next day.
Aum. Peace. Amen.
Like they have this, sort of a retreat, but like a day for the parents, and I really, it was really powerful.
Last time I finally was able to go and I really felt It was something that, you know,
sustained me maybe for the whole year.
And who is it you're bringing to camp?
This week it's my daughter, Sophie. For her actually her dad wanted her -
he had to go back to L.A. -
He wanted to spend a day with her and he said
you know why don't you skip a day and we go we go to La Jolla, and we go snorkeling?
She rather wanted to come here, and I think that says a lot.
It's my first year at the program, and I really like it.
My Mom was short stead and then my Mom find out that there was a program about meditating, and then I wanted to go.