Hi all!

While Eric is with his wife in her old stomping grounds of Florida, he asked me to write a bit on the blog about my life since camp ended. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Karen Sharir, and I’m the Assistant Girls’ Head Counselor for Lower Camp (Here’s my chance for a special shout out to the junior through freshmen girls! Hi and miss you!).

So after camp, I went home to visit Imma v Abba (my mom and dad) in Lancaster, PA and then jumped into my car and headed to the West Coast. After five days in the car, I arrived in Ashland, Oregon, which is where I live now. It’s a beautiful, valley town set at the meeting point of the Siskiyou and Cascade Mountain ranges of Southern Oregon. Such a beautiful setting makes hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, camping, bike riding, running, and other outdoor activities really popular. So even though it’s a bit cold at 36° F today, I’ve been told that this valley will remain warm enough for me to go for hikes and runs all winter long, which is a little different from downtown Philadelphia, where I lived last year.

Living here, I’ve had a couple of camp visitors including Shawn Bolton, Zack Davis, Levi Smathers, Lauren Berry, and old camp friends who’ve been away for a while like Luke Wenker and Steven Scott. It’s been great being out here to host and visit people from our summer home. I went down to see Alyssa Thibodeau and Mike Lindquist in San Francisco and was able to visit the Redwoods of Northern California. It was such a beautiful sight to see those old giants that have been around way longer than me and contribute so much to our world. A slight part of me, though, wished to be amongst the trees and the lake of Canadensis. We don’t realize how lucky we are to spend over seven weeks in such a beautiful setting at camp. I know when I return this summer, I’ll take a moment to appreciate the landscape of Canadensis.

Speaking of camp, I’ll be seeing you all in New Jersey in just a couple of days. I am really excited to catch up with everyone at the reunion and hear how all of your lives are going. It should be a lot of fun.

Until then, happy holidays to everyone. Enjoy the break from school and see you soon!

Welcome to Day 4 of our Guest Bloggers and welcome to Tim Penrod. Tim Penrod is our Soccer Director at camp and during the fall and spring months he is the Head Men’s Soccer Coach at Southern Vermont. We are very excited to welcome Little Timmy Penrod to the blog!

Hello Camp Canadensis from a very cool and colorful Bennington, VT.  This is Tim Penrod (aka “Baby Simba” – Thanks CITs ’09), currently blogging from my new office on the campus of Southern Vermont College.  We’re already getting a taste of fall with cool temperatures (55 degrees) and some leaves already starting to change to red, yellow, and orange.  It seems just days ago that I was at camp (celebrating be part of the “Five Fantastic Five Years!) enjoying the warm weather and sun!!

During my 10 months away from camp, I am the Head Men’s Soccer Coach at Southern Vermont.  This is my third year here, and the team is off to an amazing start.  Last night we won our 7th straight game, moving our season record to 8-2 overall, and 2-0 in our conference.  For those of you that have followed us in the past, we’d only won 2 games in my previous two seasons here, so the 8-2 record is a HUGE improvement.  This coming weekend we are playing our conference rivals, Lesley University.  Last year they beat us 2-1 at their homecoming, so we are looking to return the favor on Saturday.

Along with my coaching duties, I wear several other hats for the athletic department.  I am the work-study coordinator, so it’s my job to schedule all of our workers for home athletic events.  I also am one of the game day managers, so I get to play host to all of the teams who come in to play our men’s and women’s basketball teams, as well as men’s volleyball team.  So, for those of you who go to events at colleges or anywhere else, if you wonder who the person responsible for doing all the pre-game set up is, that’s a big part of what I do during the winter months.

Finally, recruiting is the most time-consuming part of my job.  I spend most of the off-season (November – June) on the road, watching high school games, going to tournaments, and scouting potential players for the future.  I get to travel throughout New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. One of the things I absolutely love about my job is the fact that I get paid to teach, watch, or evaluate soccer every day!

Hopefully I’m allowed to put this plug in here, but if anyone is interested in following my team’s progress the rest of the season as we move towards conference playoffs (and potentially a NCAA or ECAC tournament bid), you can check us out on the web at www.svcathletics.com and just follow the link to Men’s Soccer.

With that, I would like to thank JCal for asking me to do this (since Forti decided to fall asleep at the wheel and take a vacation!).  I miss all of you dearly and hope to be able to make it to the Camp Reunion this winter.  Camp Family has truly become family for me, and I look forward to seeing you all again soon!

All the best,

Tim

Day 3 of our Guest Bloggers brings us to Canadensis Favorite Betty Ash. Betty lives in Nashville, TN where she is a nurse. Betty just spend her 4th summer at Canadensis as our Head Nurse!

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Hey, How are ya’ll doing?

It’s Nurse Betty down here in Nashville, TN.  It is still warm here, but the past 2 weeks, it seems that all it is doing is raining.  I have had a hard time finding a break in the weather to exercise outside.  But when I curl up in the bed and hear the rain, I think of Canandensis 2009.

I am working Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.  All of my patients have had surgery or are going to.  I come in at 7 pm, try to get everyone settled down and asleep by 11, so I can get on facebook to farm -just kidding.  I do usually get to look at facebook, because 2 to 4 am tend to be realllll slow.  The biggest stressor most nights for me is to make sure I get to the cafeteria before it closes at 2 am.

Last week there was an employee appreciation celebration.  They fed us pizza, kettle corn, coke and ice cream treats.  There was dancing, caricature artists, and prize wheels (you spin the wheel and get a tee shirt.)  Everyone was dancing, singing, eating and laughing- it reminded me of camp- all they needed was unlawful weddings for it to be a legit carnival.

On the weekends, I go to see what my parents are up to, or to meet friends somewhere.  Labor day weekend I went to Gatlinburg- it rained all weekend, but we had a great girls weekend.  Eating and riding around the national park.

I miss camp, but love keeping up with everyone on facebook and emails.  I hope everyone has a great winter. My goals for this winter is to lose the 20 pounds I gained last summer, make it to New Orleans for a Monday night game, and make a trip out west. Gang- Stay healthy and keep in touch. I can’t wait to see everyone next year. I am with Marshall- I can’t wait to get my 5 year jacket.

Thank you, Eric for allowing me to use say Hi, ya’ll.

-Betty

Welcome to Day 2 of our Guest Blogging series. Our next blogger is none other than Lower Senior Girls Group 09′ Karen Sharir. Karen is from Lancaster, Pa. We are excited to have Karen on the blog!

Hello there to all of my camp friends and SAWATDEEKA (Thai for “hello” as some of you learned this summer)~

I’ve been appointed to write a quick “guest blog” for Eric while he’s off in Florida, so I hope that I can offer some interesting information for all of our camp families (especially the Lower Senior Girls 2009, for whom I was the Group Leader). Thanks to Eric and JCal for giving me the chance!

Well, camp is officially over, and so is post camp! I’ve been home from camp for exactly one week, which is much less time than all of the campers and most of the staff. In the past six weeks, I have spent a lot of time working with Eric Forti, Matt Unger, Justin Winch, and a handful of others to help close down the camp for the winter. I know that Eric has written about post camp some, but I thought you’d all like to hear about my perspective.

The first couple of days after the campers were gone, the post camp staff and myself had to clean cabins and run activities for the small groups that came for a couple of days. We had Karate groups, Marching Bands!, Schools, and Athletic teams all come to camp to use our wonderful facilities. As I talked to different kids from the various groups, I kept looking at them hoping to see one of the Canadensis campers that I knew so well, but none of you were there!! It was a bit sad that none of my favorite campers were there anymore, but don’t worry I had a lot of fun too. My favorite was working at the rock wall with Geo!!

So now that I’m back home (in Amish country, Lancaster, PA), I’ve got a new job at a daycare with kids much younger than a junior boy or girl. It’s a lot of fun to hang out with kids and teach them about dinosaurs and the colors in the rainbow, but it makes me miss my camp family a lot! I hope everyone is doing well and keeps in touch with everyone that they met in summer 2009. Hope to see you all at the reunion and summer 2010! Shout out to the Lower Seniors 2009 and to all of the amazing people I have met at camp over the past five years.

And thanks again Forti and JCal for giving me the chance to say hi to all of my camp friends. Forti, you better come back to Pennsylvania so I can visit you at the winter office!

-Karen

We are very excited to kick off a week of Guest Blogging with different Canadensis campers and counselors and a few special guests! Our first blogger is Danielle Faden! You may remember Danielle as Big Apple Blue Captain this summer. Danielle is currently a Junior at Upper Dublin High School in PA. She lives with her family in Maple Glen, Pa.

Hey Canadensis!

I hope everyone’s school year is off to a good start, though it can’t be any better than camp :)!  I’ve been very busy with schoolwork, as I am currently a junior in high school.  Also, I am studying to get my permit (I turn 16 next week).  Nothing too exciting is going on right now, so I’m going to talk about – what else? – camp.  You can probably tell that camp is a very special place to me.  Every single day, something reminds me of my summer home.  (It’s more of a real home than a summer home, and though my parents may not like it, they hear me say it all the time).  Someone will say something and it reminds me of an inside joke from Disney.  I’ll hear a song on the radio that we listened to everyday in the bunk.  My friends at home have heard so many stories about camp they could probably name everyone in my bunk.

One of my more exciting daily reminders of camp is this: At my school, there are A, B, and C lunches.  I was talking to my friends about what lunches we’ve had in the past and I realized that as a freshman I had B lunch, as a sophomore I had A, and this year I have B – I shouted “That’s BAB! Big Apple Blue!”  My friends looked at me like I was crazy and they didn’t appreciate it when I explained the coincidence – I was on Big Apple Blue for Color War this past summer.  Of course, when I explained it to Becky J when I saw her later in the day she shared in my excitement.

I miss camp every day.  It is the most important place in the world to me, and I miss my 21 sisters and brothers (the CITs of 2009 – miss you!).  However, I’m planning on coming back to camp next year to be a JC, so I’m looking forward to that – it’ll be my 8^th summer.  Hope to see everyone soon! Keep in touch!

-Danielle Faden

P.S. – Happy New Year and an Easy Fast to those who are celebrating the Jewish holidays!

P.P.S. – Thanks, Forti, for letting me be a guest blogger!