Final Reflections & Thank You

Mrs. Wilson and I have been home just a little over two weeks and in those two weeks I have found myself reflecting on all we did, all we saw, and all we learned during our travels. I am so thankful for this experience and I do not know if I can truly express how much of an impact this trip had on me. It has taken me these two weeks to even muster the courage to open up our blog and actually read all of our postings. Reading my own words and those of Mrs. Wilson has had a surreal effect on me. I have been reliving some of our favorite moments, so I thought as my closing post, I would share some of those favorites with you.

Warsaw was my favorite surprise. I had no idea that I would be so taken with this hard working proud city. It was the perfect introduction to our trip. We were eager and ready for adventure in Warsaw and we attacked this city with an interest that didn't die out when we left.

Picture: My favorite symbol of the Warsaw Uprising


Prague was my favorite landscape. Prague is beautiful, simply beautiful. Everywhere we went looked like a postcard picture and Mrs. Wilson and I snapped photos non-stop. The city-scape was breathtaking in the early sunlight, the fading twilight, and the illuminating moonlight. One of our best nights was spent walking the Charles Bridge and listening to a trio of string players performing on a dock beside the bridge. Prague felt like home to me, but unlike any home I have ever known.

Picture: View from the Charles Bridge

Munich was my favorite educational experience. I learned so much in Munich about who Hitler was and who he became. Top five things I learned: Hitler was a postcard artist, Hitler was a vegetarian, Hitler escaped death on numerous occasions, Hitler hijacked an ambulance to escape the Munich government overthrow gone-bad, Hitler was afraid of fog (yes,fog!)

Picture: Beer Hall where Hitler started it all with his power of speech

Musée de l'Orangerie was my favorite museum (not related to Holocaust or World War II). In Paris, Mrs. Wilson dragged me to one last museum and I so debated skipping out on her and just sitting in a lovely green chair in the park alongside the museum. But I pulled myself together and followed her in to l'Orangerie, the museum where Monet donated his famous lily pad paintings. The first room you walk into has four lily pad paintings, one on each wall. They take up the whole wall and there is a sign asking people to use these rooms to reflect on their lives and to try to refrain from speaking. Mrs. Wilson and I did this; we sat in silence and looked around the room of lily pads and calm settled upon us. We also found one painting that we loved by Modigliani called Le Jeune Apprenti (Young Apprentice). When we saw this picture, I looked at Mrs. Wilson and said, " I think I know that boy." and she knew exactly what I meant. The young boy growing out of the arms of his jacket, the eyes half closed, the resting pose, the disengaged mood all spoke to us of students past, present, and future. We both purchased a postcard copy of this portrait, so stop by and have a look and see if you too know this boy!


PIcture Le Jeune Apprenti

And lastly, my favorite site is the most important site we visited: Auschwitz. Seeing Auschwitz/Auschwitz-Birkenau was an amazing moment in my life. I have said before on this blog that I was aware of the statistics of this site and I knew the calamity of it all, but seeing it and standing in that spot felt so much more real than I could ever have imagined. I know that being there will change the way I talk about our reading of Night. I always felt the book portrayed such an amazing balance of hope and despair. Seeing Auschwitz brought all of that to the surface for me. The hope of life coming from the ashes of destruction and the despair of knowing that such evil existed was difficult to ignore standing by the railroad tracks of Auschwitz. I hope that I can relate all of that to my students because in the words of Elie Wiesel, “Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”

Picture:Remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau

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A special thanks to all of you who read our blog and especially to those of you who posted a comment, emailed us your thoughts, or called to let us know you were with us in our travels. It meant so much to me and Mrs. Wilson to hear that someone was reading our words. We chose to create the blog and update it as much as possible to benefit our students, but in actuality, we benefited the most. Writing our thoughts down and collecting photographs for the blog helped shape our memories. Knowing that you were out there reading our thoughts made us feel closer to home and we were so grateful to read someone else's views, as it got tiring listening only to ourselves. We wanted to take you all along with us on our journey and we hope we have accomplished that. Thank you for bearing with our spelling and grammar mistakes (ouch that hurts to say as your English teacher), but they were inevitable due to our late hours, busy schedule and lack of revising time. It is our hope that the blog will continue on with other Arrupe trips in the future, as well as being re-visited when 8th grade arrives at the point in our curriculum where reading this might help. Thank you again for reading and we hope you got as much out of it as we did.