Comments

I put together all comments I received from the participants of the camp and their parents. The comments appear here as is without any editing.

Sergei Preobrazhensky (participant)

Dear Alexei,

I definitely enjoyed this orienteering camp. The food was mostly Russian traditional and delicious. The trainings and exercises were designed well. The schedule was organized as well. It was simply an enjoyable experience that I would like to repeat next year.

Thank you.

Sergei

Marty Hawkes-Teeter (participant)

Alexei-

Going into this camp, I was a little bit unsure of how it would be. I mean, being the only person who doesn't speak Russian there is a serious liability. Indeed, though everyone spoke English, it was initially a little hard to get a handle on what was going on. Once I worked past that difficulty, the camp was really fun. Because it was a week long, rather than the standard weekend Junior O-camps, we were able to spend a great deal more time on each exercise, even reviewing most of them afterward. Despite all of the orienteering we did, we still had a lot of free time each day to read, play cards, or even soccer. I am very glad that I decided to go because I learned a lot about orienteering (and pretty soon I'll be able to speak fluent Russian.)

-Marty

Alexander Preobrazhensky (parent)

Dear Alexei,

Yesterday my son Sergei returned from the First Russian Style Orienteering Camp which took place on July 27 - August 2, 2003, at Beaver Pond Campsite, Harriman State Park, NY. He returned healthy and in a very good mood. He told me, it was cool. I appreciate very much your efforts and those of Yekaterina Dvinyaninova and other volunteers in organizing the camp. It is impressive that most of young participants of the camp have great achievements in orienteering according to 2002 US Orienteering Federation rankings. My son says he learned a lot from you and his fellow-campers. The atmosphere in the camp was friendly, all was very well organized, and the food was healthy. Thank you very much for this wonderful experience for my son.

We are looking forward to another orienteering camp next year.

Yours sincerely,

Alexander Preobrazhensky,

Columbus, Ohio

Kseniya Popova (participant)

hi alexei,

well, it was a very good technical and physical training for me. having four exercises a day really put me in a better shape than i was. it was good that there werent any long courses that would get us really tired, but many short ones with good technical difficulties. those marking O exercises, especially, were very useful and necessary. i think they taught me a couple of new things, like being able to pin point where i was on the map every single second of our runs. usually, i really dont concentrate fully on the course and kind of skip the information that could be very useful to me. so this particular exercise was good for me.
the food was very good also.
i really enjoyed having those russian dishes at the camp because i missed them over these three years here. i think if we are going to have this camp next year, the food menu does not need to be changed at all.
it was also nice to have more people this year. i hope that next year we'll have even more.
although we didnt have much free time to go swimming, the training really pays off for it because it keeps us focused on what we're doing which helps us out at the end.

i guess thats it for me,
thank you for creating this training for us alexei,

kseniya

Nikita Kourtchakov (participant)

This camp that I have been going to this summer was most interesting. The training at the camp was exhausting, technically and physically. 7 junior orienteerers, including me, had to run about 5-8k each day, plus one or two of us had to prepare the food even though some of us didn’t even know how to cook. I had a lot of fun and I would recommend this camp to anyone that would want a good work out.

 -Nikita Kourtchikov

Mark Polinkovski (participant)

Good morning, Alexei

I apologize for not replying earlier.

The camp was very enjoyable and educational. I learned a lot and my technique became more formalized and exact. Also, Harriman State Park was a great choice, because it had a wide variety of features and was a nice place in general. I do not think there was anything that I really did not like. I only regret is that we did not do the azimuth training (romashka).

Thank you very much for your wisdom and efforts during the camp. It was a pleasure learning from you.

Salutations,

Mark