Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s a little Thanksgiving fun featuring myself, Brian, Aunt Terri and Pam! Enjoy!!

Have you seen the new Camp Canadensis Twitter!

Follow us @ www.twitter.com/Canadensis

It’s Noah and Ben Rubin.  Thanks for asking us to guest blog!

We have been busy since school started. We both play on a football teams, and Ben also plays basketball. Between homework, Hebrew School, and sports, we are always on the go!

Over Columbus Day weekend, Noah Zaslow came over and spent the night. We had so much fun….we went to the movies, went out for dinner and hung out and talked. It was so great seeing him.

Ben’s birthday was September 22nd and he had a gym party. A ton of friends came, some special ones too……Max Rapoport, Joey Rush and Ian Gocial were there!

Noah had an awesome surprise in school last Friday, Freshman Counselor, Pete Tarnoff came to visit!!!! His mom works at my school and she arranged for Pete to come in to see me. I was so surprised to see him! I got to spend my first two periods with him, missing reading and math, which was cool!

We are really looking forward to the reunion in January. We can’t wait to see everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving (we are going to see our family in sunny Arizona!) and Happy Holidays to everyone.

Thanks again for letting us guest blog!

See you soon, Noah

Peace out, Ben

Sunday, Matt Unger and I, traveled up to camp to check up on things. Here are some pictures of how camp looks and some of the projects!

Camper Josh Brownstein is featured in this DORITOS commercial which could be shown during the Superbowl. Click below to watch!

Josh is the kid in the beginning jumping on the bed, and at the end looking into the bag. If his video is selected it could be shown on the Superbowl!

**Click Skip intro in the bottom right corner to get right to the video**

I clearly love transportation and as a matter of fact as a kid I was always in awe of the industry! I have great childhood memories of going to a local municipal airport with my dad and having breakfast while watching small planes take off! I remember riding the NJ transit bus and train into New York City and enjoying the ride. Many of you know I love boats and ships, and my dream came true on semester at sea during college when I sailed around the world on an old cruise ship for an entire semester. So yes, I love all modes of transportation.

Well today, for the first time, I am riding on an Amtrak train. I am sure most of you are laughing saying what is the big deal, its a train! But to me, its another mode of travel and I have always wanted to experience it. The real reason for me riding the rails today was to attend a conference in nyc organize by the American Camping Association (ACA). Brian and I both attended this conference which featured 3 speakers. The one that I found most pertinent and interesting spoke about social media, ie Facebook, twitter, and blogs.

He mentioned a few ideas which perhaps we will setup and use in the coming months, but most of what he talked about we already do through our own website and these blogs! As I have said before, its refreshing to hear that we are keeping up with the times and in many cases are ahead of the game and our competition. Of course we all know they don’t have a chance up against canadensis!

I also of course enjoy sitting in a room with others that share my passion and job and got to see a lot of familiar faces and friends who work at other camps. We compared notes a bit from the past summer and discussed a few ideas, etc. All in all, a very nice, informative day.

Rewind to last night. Pam, our new assistant director, has been putting together, camp get togethers for new young professionals in the local Philadelphia area. A few weeks ago, we held our first meeting with 6 camp directors in attendance and last night doubled it to 12! Way to go Pam and I look forward to this new organization really taking off. Pam planned a game of quizzo/trivia which we ended up not playing last night but will use in a few weeks at our 3rd meeting.

Speaking of Pam, she and I will be visiting camp families in the coming weeks, so if you would like to meet her, or you want my autograph or the today show logo (just kidding), let me know and we will plan a night to come visit! Email me at eric@canadensis.com! Of course Brian continues to do home visits as well, and hopefully we can cover even more terrain by all of us visiting homes. Plus who wants to sit in an office, when you have an excuse to visit camp families and have fun talking camp!

I am on my way home to Philly on the train and then will be catching up tonight on work. Tomorrow and Friday I will be in the office all day and look forward to the weekend when my girlfriend, oops fiancé, Robin, will be flying up for a bat mitzvah this coming weekend!

Hope everyone is doing well and keep checking back as Matt and I will be headed to camp overnight sun into Mon and we will post pics and video of camp!

Here’s a picture from Rachel’s Bat Mitzvah which took place on Saturday Night! Mazel Tov Rachel!!

"We had a Canadensis table of 12! You can see their centerpiece in the picture...It was a big Canadensis bunk, tennis racquets, camp fire...real letters included which she had sent to us this summer...etc. SO GREAT"

Hi Everyone,
From 35000 feet onboard a southwest airlines flight, I would like to say thanks to everyone for their kind wishes and congratulations for Robin and me. As most of you have heard by now, I surprised Robin Hasson, our lower camp girls head counselor, in class Friday morning. Here is the whole story-

Robin is a 1st grade teacher down in Florida just outside of fort lauderdale. I met her class a few weeks ago when I was staying with Robin for a week. They are awesome students and a nice group of kids! Anyway, when I went into school a few weeks ago, I showed them on a map where I travel to, pretty much all around the world! That means they know all of the secret where in the world locations I am going to this winter! Each year, I become a correspondent for Robin’s classes and make a different set of videos special to show her class while I am travelling. Last year for example they got a kick out of me in red square with the Russian hat on!

So when I went to London 2 weeks ago, I figured I can make the excuse to Robin that I wanted to read a book about London to her students, (shout out to Ali for the idea!) Only problem was that we figured out this plan after I had already returned! So, Matt Unger and I looked long and hard and found a kids guide to London sightseeing on Amazon.com

The book arrived just in time (wed night) and luckily it was perfect. It had a 2 line rhyming poem for each place in London! So I showed up to Robins class with this book and spent 15 minutes reading it. When we came to the end, I said there was one more page. On it was a picture of Robin and me with the poem- one more thing for your class to see, Robin will you marry me!

She was caught so off guard and asked me wait- is this for real? I got down on one knee and pulled out her engagement ring and I think at that point it hit her! She began to cry and hug me. After a minute both her principal and I yelled out- you didn’t answer the question! I think her exact answer was “yes, of course”. The principal asked the students if they knew what was going on and one first grader yelled out “miss Hasson just got married”! We said not quite and then enjoyed a great cake with her class.

Robin and I had a cruise prearranged for the weekend and so we had a chance to relax and absorb the fact that we are engaged. I will admit once during the cruise I still said girlfriend, but I will get the fiancé thing down soon!

In closing, I just want to say (although I think it goes without saying) how much camp means to us both. As many of you know, Robin and I met at camp in the summer of 2003 when I was evening activities director and Robin was the girls head counselor. We have been best of friends since that point and realized one summer that we were meant to be together after all those years of being good friends. Camp means the world to us and so it is so exciting to be able to share this story with all of you. Now I promise this blog won’t turn into a wedding planning website but perhaps I will highlight some of the funnier moments throughout the process.

Thanks to all of you- campers, counselors, administration, staff, and camp families for your support and well wishes! A special thank you to JayCal for providing up to the minute coverage and updates on this blog during our very special day!

ERIC AND ROBIN

ARE ENGAGED!

Click Here for a clip from the all new Canadensis Today

This morning Eric Forti popped the question to Lower Girls Camp Head Counselor Robin Hasson at her school in Florida! Eric went to Robin’s 1st grade class to read her students a special story. When he got to the end of the story he read the words, “will you marry me.” More details on Monday and a special Canadensis Today will be posted later today!

“Will you …”

Robin and the Ring

Special Thanks to Julie Santiago for the pictures!