Good Morning Canadensis!

I’m finally back from my two week hiring road-trip! It was a crazy few days, and lots of fun, but I’m really glad to be back home and back in the office! Now I’m going to rewind and share with you some highlights from my trip!

First off, Brian and I drove a BRIGHT BLUE PT Cruiser from Detroit to Philadelphia. As you can see below, we found another car at our first hotel that seemed to be a good match…

Our first dinner stop was one of Brian’s favorite Kalamazoo restaurants, The Olde Peninsula:

We tried one of the most interesting appetizers I’ve ever seen, Pretzel mozzarella sticks! They were just like normal mozzarella sticks, but instead of breading around the cheese, it’s bits of pretzel! I’d never had anything like that before so it was exciting to try something new, and they were really delicious!

The next day we interviewed at Western Michigan University, and I had my first experience at BiggBy coffee, a new midwest coffee franchise that’s on it’s way to sweeping the nation! All their marketing was colorful and animated:

I don’t know if you can tell from the picture below, but all the menus and signs are cute and adorable, even the drink names are precious: Nutty Buddy, Caramel Marvel, and White Lightning, to name a few…

So enough of that. After happy coffee and a day of interviews we had dinner at a restaurant that had been renovated from an old train station:

The next night we spent some time in Ann Arbor. We tried a restaurant named “Red Hawk”, which had the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had in my whole life:

…and after that, we made a pit stop at the Alpha Delta Pi house, and I stopped to say hello and take a picture:

After a fun day at EMU we were finally off to Ohio! In Ohio we had dinner at a little restaurant across the street from our hotel, comically named “Frickers”

Brian was disappointed in the intensity of his hot wings, but overall it was a fun time! The next day we got to see fun camp friends, and Bridgett Haley took us to Campus Pollyeyes, where she works as a waitress, for their famous breadsticks:

Look how big they are next to the menu!

After that we headed off to Athens, Ohio, and had an amazing time with Martha Archer. She took us out in downtown Athens for some delicious Mexican cuisine!

Casa Nueva was Martha’s recommendation, and she was definitely right on! I’m not usually very experimental with what I order, but since this trip was all about new experiences I thought I’d go out on a limb and try my first Chimichanga, and it was awesome! We had delicious desserts as well, and there were so many vegan friendly options, I couldn’t help but think about one of our best friends, counselor Erica Carey.

The next day we woke up early and Martha gave us a lovely tour of the campus, which was absolutely stellar! If I had seen Ohio U when I was looking at colleges it would’ve posed UVM a serious threat!

That’s a picture of the student center, where we held interviews, and which boasts a beautiful campus view, and a glorious interior. I was honestly in love.  We stopped for coffee at “Donkey” which made me feel as though I’d stepped into a coffee shop in Burlington again; I think that’s why I liked Athens so much, it was just like Vermont.  The coffee was honestly the best I’ve had in a long time, way better than any Starbucks cup, and it was a much needed morning pick-me-up.

…and of course I had to stop and take a picture with the Alpha Delta Pi house…

After lunch at a cute 1950’s style diner, where I tried my first frittata, we drove off to Pittsburgh.

When we arrived in Pittsburgh Friday evening we met up with Elana Sharir and Ethan Cohen for a delicious dinner at Six Penn Kitchen.

Elana and I indulged our veggie loving selves and ordered an amazing cauliflower appetizer, followed by a super delectable buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese. We were loving it!

For dessert we all shared “The Six Penn Circus”, which was a plate piled high with carnival inspired goodies (cotton candy, caramel corn, whoopee pies, and so on…). You’ll hear all about it in a video coming soon…

So now it’s week two of this journey and Brian has hopped a flight back to New Jersey, leaving me armed with my PT Cruiser and Forti’s Navigon. I spent Saturday in the city with Chris Anderson-Spallone and he took me for an infamous Pittsburgh treat:
At Primanti Brothers, they top your sandwich with Fries and Coleslaw, and while at first I was hesitant, Chris assured me that this was a Pittsburgh favorite, even Karen Sharir loves it here, and so sticking with my promise to try new things, I ordered.

That’s an actual shot of my sandwich! It wasn’t easy to eat, and I may have used my fork a little, but we managed and it was really good!

So after some great shopping in Shadyside Chris returned me to my hotel near the airport and I watched The Princess Diaries and packed my bags to leave in the morning.

Sunday morning I headed off to Slippery Rock Pennsylvania and I found my hotel was conveniently placed across the street (literally less than 500 feet) from the Grove City Outlets. I guess I HAD to go shopping…

…and had some success. I met one of my friends from Freshman year of college for a little while that evening, and we drove to Sheets to get coffee. Sheets is probably the closest thing to Wawa I saw throughout my trip, so I was very excited!

The next day I interviewed at Slippery Rock, and then made my way off to West Virginia University. I got to see Jess Marinaro and she took me on a tour of the WVU campus, including a cool ride on their little personal monorail cars!

The PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) runs on it’s own! You press a button, tell it where you want to go, and you’re off! It’s not like a monorail, where the cars are all linked together, these are little individual cars! It was so much fun! The next day I did a camp fair and met some great people, and then hopped in my car and drove off to Shippensburg PA.

Shippensburg wasn’t too eventful. I was tired from the long drives, so I went to bed early. The next day I woke up and everything was covered in snow! I pulled up to the University to get my parking pass, and by the time I got back to my parked car, the windows were covered again! The Student Union was beautiful! I met some really great applicants and had some great interviews. After a long snowy day I got back in the Cruiser and drove off to the University of Maryland.

UMD was great! I got to visit with one of my best camp friends and we spent the evening watching our favorite episodes of South Park and playing guitar and singing camp favorites. The next day I woke up and held interviews in the UMD career center, and got to meet up with CIT ’06 Dani Stein for a delicious sushi lunch! She took me to their Greek store, taught me all about their cool school mascot (The Terp), and then I held my last interview for the day!

After Maryland I hopped in the car and made my way back to Philadelphia! It was so good to see the “Welcome to Pennsylvania” sign on the highway. My dad met me at the Philadelphia Airport and I said goodbye to the Electric Blue PT Cruiser. We somehow managed to get all my bags in the car and headed home.

All in all it was a great two weeks. I saw some beautiful campuses, met some great people, and most importantly got to talk about camp constantly! I had a great time with everyone, and I’m more excited than ever for June to arrive!

Alright friends, more blogging later!

Hey hey hey! The last few days have been so busy, I’ve hardly had time to breathe, let alone blog! I’m currently sitting in my hotel room in Pittsburgh and I plan on making my way into the city for the day, so I figure I’ll blog about the last few days now, and then post a grand pittsburgh entry later!

We started interviews at Central Michigan University bright and early Tuesday morning, and met so many great people! After CMU we headed out of town and off to Ann Arbor to meet with one of the counselors who will be working at the lake this summer. She met Brian and I for dinner at a great little restaurant near the University of Michigan and we got to talk about camp and color war and all the exciting things she can expect this summer! After the most delicious macaroni and cheese we’ve ever had, Brian and I made a quick stop at the Alpha Delta Pi house at U Mich, that’s a chapter of my sorority, and I got to say hi and take a picture outside. I was really excited!

So the next morning we held interviews at Eastern Michigan University and met some more great applicants. We even got a visit from Nikki Campbell! After EMU we headed off to Ohio to interview at Bowling Green and Ohio University. At BGSU we got to spend time with Shawn Bally and Bridget Haley, and Bridget’s friend Allison who will be a new counselor this year! We had the coolest breadsticks for lunch (we explain in an upcoming video…) and when we arrived at Ohio U we were greeted by a very enthusiastic Martha Archer!

Martha took us to the coolest mexican restaurant, Casa Nueva, and I tried my very first Chimichanga! We enjoyed some delicious desserts, and decided to meet up the next morning, Friday morning, for Martha to show us the campus and downtown sights! Martha took us to try the best coffee, showed us the most beautiful buildings, and even took me to a Greek Shop that sold sorority clothes and accessories. I was pretty much in heaven and bought tons of cool ADPi stuff.

After lunch at a sweet diner, we said goodbye to Martha (she tried to hide in the trunk!) and headed out to Pittsburgh! Last night we went into the city and picked up Elana Sharir and Ethan Cohen along the way! We had dinner at Six Penn, which was so delicious! Elana and I were huge fans of the cauliflower appetizer, and we both had the buffalo chicken mac ‘n cheese for dinner, which was oh-so-spicy but oh-so-good!

So now I’m in my hotel in Pittsburgh and hopefully I’ll be seeing some more camp friends later today! I hope you’re all keeping up with the blog, and I plan to have some cool videos and pictures uploaded as soon as possible!

Greetings from Michigan!

It’s been a fun and exhausting first day! Right now I’m blogging from my hotel room in Mount Pleasant, where we’ll be interviewing students tomorrow at Central Michigan University. We met some really awesome people today so I’m looking forward to new faces tomorrow!

Brian and I are driving around in a bright electric blue PT cruiser. I like to think that it’s our own little Blue Greased Lightnin’ (hey hey CITs ’06). We were both responsible for creating road trip playlists on our iPods, so it’s been fun listening to new music, and there have been some pretty awesome sing-alongs. We’ve had dinner at an old train station turned restaurant, sampled the local favorite dishes, stopped for coffee at the happiest coffee shop on earth, and found some amazing students who will hopefully be your new amazing counselors.

I’d blog longer but we have a very early day tomorrow! Pictures and videos will be coming soon, so check back later for more from roadtrip 2009.

Brian had a muffin this morning, but it was disappointing.
He hopes that tomorrow his breakfast will be warm and delicious.

Hi Canadensis!

So here I am, sitting in the airport awaiting the departure of my flight to Michigan! Brian is already on his way there from New Jersey… he might even be there by now! We are meeting at the Detroit airport and then making our way to Western Michigan University where we will hold a full day of staff interviews tomorrow! So exciting!

I’ve had some interesting interactions at the airport so far, the girl who checked my bags wanted to know where I bought my leggings (I am so in love with outfits that require leggings!) and we had a great chat about how express is selling some great tights right now, but how Old Navy and American Eagle are great if you need black leggings in a pinch. The man at the security check was very friendly, after a brief chat about the lovely weather he told me that it was such a pleasure to make my acquaintance, so I told him I was glad to be his friend. I really like to make friends with people at the airport, I feel safer knowing that the girl who makes sure my bag gets on the right plane is thinking about how glad she is I told her where to get this season’s tights.

I am also very excited to be flying with new luggage! (Okay, this is the part where Gabe rolls his eyes and Brian starts memorizing everything I’m writing so he can tease me about it in the car when I land). I bought a fabulous Betsey Johnson rolling duffle, it’s black with gold piping and detailing, and all over the bag are cool neon travel signs like “Welcome the Fabulous Betseyville”  and “Betsey Motel”. I saw it at the shop and fell in love. I felt so flashy trotting through the airport with my big black shades and hot new baggage. Ugh, I’m such a girl…

Okay, so now I’m sitting in my terminal waiting to board the plane. Unfortunately, Terminal E is very boring and has limited shopping opportunities. I usually fly out of the JFK airport, because I am 100% obsessed and in love with JetBlue Airlines. If I could only fly one airline for the rest of my life, it would be JetBlue. The new JB terminal at JFK is stunning, and I honestly get to my flight early just so I can browse through the shops. Oooh I just looove that airport.

So now I’m just sitting around the terminal… waiting… waiting… waiting…

… TTYL, FROM MICHIGAN!

Hi Family!

Sorry for the lack of updating, it’s been a hectic week! I’m trying to get counselors interviewed and set before I leave for a TWO WEEK trip to meet and interview more staff! I’m leaving Sunday morning, and I won’t be home until Friday the 20th! I’ll be flying out of Philadelphia and starting the trek in Michigan. I’ll go from Western Mich, to Central Mich, to Eastern Mich, to Bowling Green, to Ohio all in a week! Then I’ll spend that weekend in the Pittsburgh area, and start out the next Monday at Slippery Rock. After that I’ll make my way to West Virginia, Shippensburg, Maryland, and Delaware. So counselors, if I’m going to be at your school, I expect phone calls and text messages so we can get together!

Today the office is bustling, Matt and I watched the new reunion 411 video a few times, because it was just that awesome! Now I’m getting a bunch of contracts ready to go out to new counselors! I’ve only got one staff interview this afternoon, which is nice, because sometimes I have 4 or 5 in a day! And while I really like to talk (you know it!) sometimes all that talking is tiring by the end of the day! I’m also trying to work around schedules of counselors from all over the country, so sometimes I end up in my room at night, interviewing a counselor who just got out of class in California. It’s wild, but I really like talking to people about camp, telling camp stories, and so on… I feel as though you can all relate 😉

We got lots of snow last night and the view from my window this morning was lovely. Not quite as lovely as the view from my bedroom in Vermont, but I’m really enjoying this Pennsylvania winter, rather than the ice covered tundra that is New England. The good news is that with this much snow, conditions will be perfect for a day of Canadensis sledding when I return!

Think I’m kidding?
I’ve got snow pants ready for the occasion!

Anyways, I must get back to trip preparations and setting up interviews with students at the schools I’m visiting. I recommend everyone watch the new 411, it’s seriously one of my favorite 411’s EVER… my all time favorite 411 is the “Tips from the Top” 411 we made with Aunt Terri and Shark at the Candy Store… most hilarious day of my summer!

Alright camp fam, stay warm, and keep checking back for more!

Hey Canadensis!

It was a really busy week in the office, especially in the last few days. Sorry for the lack of post updating!!! Camp is getting closer and closer with each passing day and I am getting more and more excited to see you all.

Today I’m sitting at home with my doggies, helping my sister study for her midterms, and soon I’ll be getting ready to take a much needed trip to the King of Prussia mall. I love when the stores start to bring in all the clothes for spring, it makes me realize that summer is around the corner. Other than mall trips and biology studies, I’m in the middle of turning all my sorority tee shirts into a quilt, a quilt that I’ll be bringing up to camp this summer and using in my cabin! Perhaps you all saw the Camp Shirt quilt I made for Eric Forti…

 

…or the one I made for Becky J…

 

 

 

 

I’m also in the middle of redecorating the walls in my room, which I started last night by hanging a new flat screen across from my bed. I’m excited to update picture frames with reunion photos and some great pictures from Summer ’08. But for now I’ve got to get back to helping my sister study for her exam, and wrangling the crazy puppies who have decided to chase each other through the kitchen.

Enjoy the Weekend!

Gooooood Morning Canadensisssss! (In the style of Will Armon)

So most of you are probably sitting at home today, celebrating a day off of school! The roads where I live are covered in snow, so I’ve set up a little office at my kitchen table and I’ll be making calls and talking to staff all while in my pajamas! 

So earlier this month my little sister had an AMAZING Sweet 16 party, and since then we’ve been sitting around in anticipation of getting the pictures and video back. We hired the same photographer who did MY sweet 16, and so far some of the shots we’ve gotten in emails look amazing! I did a lot of the planning and design, one of my (many) secret ambitions is to be an event planner, so it was really fun to get to do this party. Camp celebrity Jason Calabretta came in from New York to video the night, and camp friends Rebecca Waxman, Jess Cook, Danielle Faden, and Rebecca Jacobson also made their way to the party! 

 

 

Anyways, so now I’ve got to get back to hiring fabulous counselors. I have met so many great applicants, and I am really excited to go on a two week road trip to meet even MORE potential staff! Rest assured Canadensis, your counselors are going to be the greatest ever!

Question of the Day: I am still using my ancient iPod mini (remember when they came out?) and after many years of work my musical friend has stopped charging the battery. So I want your opinion: What great little music player do you use? Why do you love it? Tell me all about it!

 

Video Clip of the Week:
mov02699

Hi everyone! I hope you all got a chance to take a look at the video blog in my previous post, it’s great fun! Rachel and I had such a good time recording it, and the weekend meeting was really an awesome time!

 

 

 

We had a huge camp staff dinner after a long day of talking about camp, and it was nice to laugh and unwind with camp friends! I had the most amazing butternut squash ravioli and Rachel’s mouth caught fire from her blackened chicken sandwich. We strolled back to the hotel, and then a few of us made a quick stop by the Applebaum house to visit with CITs ’07, Haley, and Kenzie (who flew in all the way from Oregon!!!). It was delightful, and they bought the most amazing cupcakes to share with us.  Forti was really into the Reese’s cupcake! I tried the cookie dough cupcake and it was delish… who knew that was a cupcake?!?!

 

 

 

So after our cupcake adventure we returned to the hotel and lounged around the lobby, telling stories and laughing until we were so tired we had to drag ourselves to bed! My phone alarm accidentally went off at 7am (oops!) and we laughed because I wake up to reveille every morning (just like we do at camp!) so it was very appropriate! I quickly turned it off and went back to sleep until 9, which is late for me!

When we woke up, Rachel and I used my computer to call  former Evening Activities Director/CIT Counselor Gabe Vander Hey who is all the way in Mozambique, Africa! We talked to Gabe while we got ready for breakfast, said goodbye, and headed downstairs for a delicious morning meal! After that we were ready to head out to the reunion!

We arrived at the bowling alley and set up the balloons, rolled the posters, and got ready for all of you to arrive! The first campers to burst through the doors were Hallie Katz and Rachel Weltmann, two of my campers from my first summer at Canadensis! I was so excited to see these girls and I really can’t believe that this precious bunk of little ones are actually SENIOR campers! I may only be 22 years old, but I had one of those “I feel so old!” moments when they walked into the Senior Camp meeting.

It was so nice to see so many smiling faces, reminisce about fun camp memories, and get excited for the upcoming summer, which is only a few short months away!

So now I’m back in the office, back to calling counselors and planning my college road trip to go meet more staff! Special shout out to Max Blum who is an avid reader of this blog!

Things I Love Today:
Burt’s Bees Replenishing Lip Balm. It may only be chapstick, but it’s infused with pomegranate oil and is SO good for winter time chapped lips!

Currently Listening To:
“To The Beat of Our Noisy Hearts” – Matt Nathanson 

Video Blog!

Today has been quite a busy day! Matt Unger and I have spent all morning trying to get my printer to behave, and we finally got it working, so I’m feeling quite relieved.  We’ve been printing pictures and letters for me to use on the sign in boards for the REUNION this weekend!

I need to stop and say that I am SO SO SO excited for the reunion. This is my FIRST Canadensis reunion because in previous years I’ve been at school in Vermont and can’t make it home, but this year I am so glad to be able to see you all! 

Anyways, Aunt Terri came in this morning and she brought me a Dunkin’ Donuts latte (I loooove them) and we watched the newest videos on the website. I hope you all enjoyed my tour of the winter office. I felt silly watching myself, but I think I did a pretty good job of showing you all around!

We decided to order in Pizzas for lunch, and we tried a place called “Apollo”, and I have to say it was REALLY good. I mean, nothing compares to good ole’ continental pizza at camp pizza parties, but this came pretty close…

So now I’m back to work, calling counselors and giving interviews, working on these beautiful boards for you all to write on, and enjoying my internet radio. My latest discovery is a website called “Pandora”, where you type in your favorite musical artist, and they create a radio station based on songs you like, and dislike. I really love it, because I get to find new artists all the time. I even used it to listen to Jesse Ruben, as recommended by Danielle Faden, and I’m loving it! I made a Vanessa Carlton station, and now I’m just waiting for “White Houses” to come on (Hi CITS 2008!)…

Alright. That’s it for today! Only a few days until we’re all together!!!

 

*UPDATE*- At 2:42pm “White Houses” came on my Pandora Radio!