Welcome to Warsaw, Poland my final destination of my 2009 Where in the World Trip! What a trip it has been…we will post some highlights from my trip to Australia and Eastern Europe in the coming days. Click here to check out my latest video from Warsaw, Poland. Continue to check my blog for more updates and the winners in the upcoming days!

Hello from Budapest! I’ve had a great trip so far and have hired alot of great staff for Summer 2009!

This picture is from the hiring fair in Budapest where I was met by many former Canadensis Staff! Pictured from left to right are: Esther Galamboszi, Zsofia Ivan, Nora Kasik, me (Eric Forti), Janos Kerezsi, and Gergely Bodo.

A special thanks to all of the staff who met me at the fairs to help me find the best Support Staff for 2009!

Eric has arrived in Budapest!

Find out where he’s going next by Clicking Here!

Due to a technical problem, we are reposting Clue 5 for Eric’s next destination. Check back Sunday night after 8PM to see where Eric has arrived!

Click here to find out where Eric’s going next!

Remember to email your guesses to editor@canadensis.com.

Hey Everyone! I had an amazing time in Prague and am literally minutes away from our staff hiring fair here in the Czech Republic! I flew in last night and immediately went into town for dinner. I did a little exploring before and of course brought you along for the ride!

Click here for my introduction to Prague video!

Click here to see me answer some of your questions and answers!

Today I went out and explored the oldest active Jewish synagogue in all of Europe and had a brief tour. Of course following the tour, I needed to eat so Pam Levi (co-Evening Activities Director with me a few years ago) knew of a great bagel place to head to. We went to Bohemian Bagel and you will never believe who I ran into! Check out the attached video and see Joe Shelley and Jesse Charnoff, CITs 2004. They are studying this semester in Prague and by chance ran into them. Pay special attention to Jesse’s shirt and I promise you this was NOT PLANNED!!!! See, Canadensis truly is a global, worldwide camp.

Check out the video by clicking here.

I have to run and go hire some terrific staff for Summer 2009. Tomorrow, I fly out at 4:45 AM to my next destination. Find out where i’m going by checking out the next post!

Click here to view Eric’s next clue! Remember email all guesses to editor@canadensis.com

Update: Look who Eric ran into while in this city…

Hello Everyone! My last three days in Moscow have been crazy busy. On Monday, I flew from Saint Petersburg, Russia to Moscow, Russia, which was only about a 30 minute flight. The airport in Saint Petersburg was designed so “smartly” with steps at the entrance and you had to carry your 50 pound suitcases up the stairs- ingenious I tell you. Our flight was great on Aeroflot, which was a pleasant surprise on an absolutely brand-new Airbus aircraft, that was built in August 2008.

Upon our arrival in Moscow, the 9 camps that had travelled to Saint Petersburg joined up with about 15 other camps for the Moscow camp fair. We were treated to a huge feast as a welcome dinner and toasted to a great hiring fair and Summer 2009!

Tuesday morning, we had our staff hiring fair and I interviewed some great kitchen/laundry staff for this coming summer. Following that, I went on a sightseeing tour of Red Square and a Jewish synagogue, in which I had the chance to pray in Hebrew, using a Russian/Hebrew siddur! I guess I need to confess that we stopped at a Sbarro pizza place for a taste of home, which was very welcomed to all of us. At night we had a big farewell dinner (yes we eat a lot) and there were pantomimes, which were interesting and strange!

Right now I am typing this from the airport as we head to our next destination. Check out the video clip- enjoy and good luck!

 

P.S. Keep sending in your questions to editor@canadensis.com so that I can answer them in future videos!

Hi Camp Family!

So it’s been a while since my last post, I’ve been crazy busy wrapping things up from my trip and getting back into the swing of things in the office. The stack of papers on my office desk is slowly shrinking back to the normal amount of clutter and the file of New Staff Hires is growing by the day! Which is exciting, because it means camp is seriously only a few weeks away!!! Okay… for me it’s more like 10 weeks, but that’s still SO close!

This weekend was amazing and I got to see so many camp friends and celebrate the Bat Mitzvah of Miss Charley Paston! The whole evening was wonderful and Charley looked absolutely gorgeous! Super-Counselor Erica Carey met me at my house to get ready and then we drove off to Long Island! The Amazing Jacki Beckerman was also in attendance, and spent the whole night tearing up the dance floor with us, especially with some stellar dance moves from Olivia Wind and Dani Schapiro! We took goofy pictures, sang crazy songs with glittery microphones, and of course gave out LOTS of hugs! Here are some pictures from our amazing night:

After an AMAZING night I took Erica on a short driving tour of Long Island. I spent my first year of college on the island, so I showed her my old dorm and some pretty buildings, and then we went to my favorite bagel shop, A&S Bagels – Open 24 hours a day, and bought some delicious late night snacks for the ride home. On the way home we entertained ourselves with some good CDs and a phone call from Becky J.

So I spent Sunday relaxing after the busy weekend, and on Monday I enjoyed the snow day just like most of you! I made all my camp calls from my bedroom! Now I’m back in the office and back to getting things ready for summer 2009. I might be taking a trip up to camp this week with Matt Unger so perhaps I’ll post some cool videos or pictures from our excursion. I should also make a shout out to one of my most dedicated blog readers, Adam Scharfberg. He sends me funny messages while I’m in the office about delicious salads he bought at Wawa and how excited he is to visit me at camp this summer. Crunch!

Until then I hope the weather gets warmer and melts all this ridiculous snow! It was just starting to feel like Spring…

Hope everyone back at home is enjoying all the snow! Here’s a clue for my next location. Click Here to View Eric’s newest clue! Remember to send your guesses to editor@canadensis.com.

We have already received several emails from campers and staff members with their guesses. Also, if you have any questions for Eric about his destinations or travels, please email them to editor@canadensis.com.

Hi Everyone!

While most of you are off enjoying your snow days back home, I”m very busy here in St. Petersburg. Sorry I haven’t been posting more to my blog, but things have been so busy! Let’s start with the flight over to St. Petersburg! On Thursday evening I boarded an Air France flight headed to Paris, France for a brief stopover. I slept about 2 hours total and arrived Friday morning in Paris. I treated myself to a chocolate croissant (pain au chocolate- in French) and immediately boarded my next flight for St. Petersburg, Russia. I arrived here to Russia on Friday afternoon in the freezing cold, with a little bit of snow coming down.

We were picked up and taken right to our hotel for a shower (remember it had been 2 days since I showered- too much info, sorry) so I enjoyed a long shower and then went to a welcome dinner. I should explain that when I travel on these staff recruiting trips, there are other camps from all across the USA travelling with me. CCUSA (Camp Counselors USA) organizes a big staff hiring fair in each city that we go to and we setup a table for a few hours and talk to possible staff. Here in Eastern Europe, I am recruiting for our support staff, which are our kitchen, laundry, and maintenance staff. Basically, all of the behind the scenes staff who work incredibly hard all summer to ensure camp runs smoothly!

So back to the welcome dinner- here in St. Petersburg there are 9 camps travelling with me, but we will increase in size as we travel to more cities. The food here is fairly diverse. We are always welcomed with tons of appetizers on the table. They range from smoked/cured deli meats to fresh fruit and vegetables to smoked fish (such as lox and sable) to bread, etc. I of course am not as adventurous as most when it comes to food and eat plainly with the bread and vegetables/fruit mainly. For entrée, we were served steak kabobs that were grilled right in front of us in an open pit. They were actually quite good!

After a long (3 hour) dinner, I went to bed to get some sleep because Saturday morning was our staff hiring fair! I had to be awake. Luckily, I did sleep roughly 7 hours which was good and then was greeted in the morning by Marina Skorokhodova (who worked in our kitchen last year and will be returning again) to help me recruit staff. 

We hired a few staff members who will be arriving in mid-May to assist with precamp and summer camp, so that was good. After the fair, we were taken for a walk along the main street in St. Petersburg. We saw many churches and palaces as well as walked through some shops (mainly to warm up!) After our walk, we had a late lunch at McDonald’s (which is always a sure bet) and then headed to the ballet. Now as in the past, I am not a huge fan of the ballet. OK, I am not a fan at all. However, being in Russia this is something special and should not be missed. We went to the Mariinsky Theatre (which is a very famous theatre here) and were seated in a box right on the front side, like royalty! Truly was special. I tried to videotape a tiny portion of the ballet for you, so click here for it!

Click here to View Ballet Video

Sunday morning, a tour was organized of the Yusupov Palace, which is one of 2,000 palaces in St. Petersburg. This palace was not destroyed during any of the wars here, as so many of the other palaces were, so everything was original and it was truly spectacular. The inlay wood floors, the silk wallpaper, beautiful ornate furniture, and the marble columns were absolutely breathtaking. We were guided through this huge palace for a 2 hour tour and it was fascinating. We saw the living quarters of the females, with a secret passage doorway that led to a private staircase directly to the mens room, and no I didn’t make that up! There was a private theatre that sat 200 within this palace as well as art gallery rooms, etc. The palace is absolutely stunning and was really enjoyable to see.

After the palace tour, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant called “Idiot”. It is national pancake week (I don’t really know why) and so we ordered pancakes! Their pancakes are more like crepes and I chose mine with shredded apples and caramel- YUM!!!! Sorry I didn’t take any pictures for you to see, but you wouldn’t be able to enjoy it fully anyway.

Tonight, we attended a special dinner in our honor with the Russian Camp Director’s Association. Basically, we sat with about 12 Russian camp directors. The challenging part was none of them spoke English, not even a word! Luckily, we had 3 staff from the CCUSA agency who translated all of the toasts and side conversations and it was really nice to meet other people who are in our professions. Camps in Russia are typically 3-week overnight camps, and most of the camps specialize in one activity. So, you go to 3 weeks for arts, or sports, or education, etc. unlike attending Canadensis, where you are exposed to a lot of different activities all summer long. We talked about the many challenges that we all face in the camping industry and ironically enough many of the challenges American camps face are similar to the Russian camps. This was definitely a highlight of the trip as it allowed me an opportunity to speak to other people doing the exact same thing as I do all year round!

Now it is about 11 PM. I forgot to mention that last night, I slept a total of 2.5 hours, mainly due to jetlag and partially due to hanging out with the other camp directors here for fun. So, I am absolutely exhausted and will hopefully go to bed early-ish tonight. Tomorrow I fly out to my next destination, which the clue is posted for. Continue the guesses and please stay tuned to my blog for more updates!

P.S. If anyone has any questions for me, feel free to email them to editor@canadensis.com so that I can answer them for you while I am overseas!