Malone Service Learning - Poland

The team is now well on their way home and scheduled to land in New York at approximately 4:10pm. There is a 2 hour delay showing for their flight from New York to Cleveland so if you are planning to pick up a team member from the airport it would be a good idea to check on the flight status before leaving.  

This morning we toured Wawel ("Vav-el") Cathedral and St. Mary's Basilica, probably the two most important Roman Catholic churches in Krakow.  The first was where a priest named Carol Woytila was bishop and then cardinal, before becoming Pope John-Paul II.  It is the royal cathedral, with each king adding a private chapel to the church.  We visited their graves in the chapels and the catacombs beneath the church.  As Rachel noted tonight, despite all of their wealth and power, they are all dead - none of that matters now.  After that, we turned everyone loose on the town, and the ladies hit the shops.  Tonight, we ate a feast of traditional Polish foods, served family style, and then went back to the town square where we had hot chocolate at a restaurant that has been in that location, making and serving chocolates, for over a century.  We ended the day with a communion service.  We are all tired but well, and ready to get up early to begin our homeward journey.  Peace be...

This was a day of contrasts.  It began with breakfast among friends who had shared so many good times during the past week, and ended with sober reflections on the difficulties of trying to come to grips with what transpired at Auschwitz between 1942 and 1945. This morning, we ate a traditional Polish breakfast of bread, cheese, sliced meats, jams, and coffee and juice.  We packed and cleaned up after ourselves, and then loaded the cars and trailers for our trip to Oswiecim.  The trip was uneventful The day was overcast and colder than any on our trip so far, only in the mid-30s.  We met our tour guide and walked on to the grounds of Auschwitz I, and through the gate upon which is written a lie fabricated in iron, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” – “Word will set you free”.  Here we saw the “small” camp which held 30,000 concentration camp prisoners, where prisoners were punished in standing cells, hung by their hands behind their backs, executed after summary judgment, and where the first experime...

Final Day in Sosnoviec and Będzin  This was a very long but wonderful day as we served the community and the church.  It began last night with preparing foods for the dinner that we would host at the church tonight (more about that later).  Then we drove to “American Day in Norwid”.  Norwid is an inner city high school in Będzin named after the last of Poland’s Romantic poets.  When we arrived at the school, we were greeted by the principal and ushered in to the gym where they had already set up booths for the four states that our group was to represent to give the students a picture of America – Massachusetts, “Carolina” (North and South!), California, and, of course, O-H-I-O!!!  The rest of the school was set up similarly for other things – German class, music class, history, etc.  We learned that they used today as a recruitment day for middle school students who might be interested in attending the school next year.  In this city, students choose which of four schools they go to, a...

What an early morning for the team! Everyone woke up this morning and was ready to walk out the door at 6:30 AM. After a five hour train ride to Poland, the team established themselves in the church where they will stay for the next two nights. The church is very nice! There are two bedrooms set up for the 10 girls (including Iris). There are little mattresses set up for each girl and Dr. Entwistle has his own room in an office. The pastor’s wife prepared an incredible dinner for the team. The dinner was delicious! Shortly after dinner, the team traveled to the local grocery store, it was HUGE. The team spent nearly two hours looking around. Since tomorrow evening the church is hosting an English Café, the team was asked to prepare some traditional “American” food. Some of the foods that the team will prepare include: macaroni and cheese, tacos, hot dogs, and for dessert they are making ice cream and brownies. Upon leaving the grocery store, the team stopped to try what Dr. Entwistle s...

We caught our train with time to spare this morning, and were treated to free jelly doughnuts for Fat Tuesday at the train station.  We just finished a wonderful feast of pan fried chicken, yellow potatoes, and salad at the church.  We are now headed to do some shopping for an outreach event that the church will host tomorrow, with American food (including tacos!) that will give University students a chance to practice English and eat some of the foods that are common to us.  One minor injury (Katelyn stubbed her finger pretty good when putting her suitcase on the train, but it appears to be okay, just sore), otherwise, we are all doing very well.  z Bogiem!  Dr. E.

Today was a very eventful day. The team woke up to have a wonderful Austrian breakfast which includes: a variety of bread, sandwich meat, yogurt, fruit, and much, much more! Shortly after breakfast we headed to the Viktor Frankl museum which included a lecture from a wonderful lady who was very intelligent and well-educated on Frankl’s theory. After listening to the lecture the team headed to a little café near the next museum. At the café the team ordered a number of different soups including: tomato, lentil, and spinach. The team had to eat quickly in order to meet the appointment time at the Alfred Adler museum. There they sat in a circle and listened to a lecture by another well-educated lady. She told the team all about Alfred Adler and his encounter with Sigmund Freud and Individual Psychology. When the team left the last lecture, they headed to New City Wien, the church in Vienna, to help with the church’s English Café. The English Café is designed for individuals to come from t...

 

Greetings from Dr. Entwistle.  I am sorry to be posting yesterday's update so late.  Our hotel is overrun with guests, and, as a result, the Wi-Fi connection was overwhelmed.  The Malone students are split into two rooms, and this is the update that was written by one of the rooms last night: Vienna/Austria day 2 This morning we had an Austrian style breakfast at the hotel, which everyone enjoyed. We walked through town to get to the Sigmund Freud museum and happened across a display of keys that belonged to the Jewish families from the area that were displaced or deported from their homes during WWII. At the Freud museum we got to see where he treated his patients and where he wrote some of his theories. We also saw some video clips of Freud interacting with his family and friends (and dog!), which made him seem a bit more human. While sightseeing , we stumbled across an ice skating park with lots of yummy food in front of an old palatial building.  We also saw a beautiful theatre...

The team had a full day today as they visited the Freud Museum and spent the evening at church. Everything is going well.

Greetings from Vienna!  While our friends and family back home are jus t starting their afternoon, many of us have been up for almost 36 hours.  We had a nice visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Annex near the Dulles airport during our long layover yesterday, and then an uneventful eight hour flight to Vienna.  Today, we entered through passport control and started to learn our way around the train and subway system, viewed a few cathedrals, did a bit of shopping, and got settled into our hotel.  Everyone is very tired, but doing well.  Tomorrow, we will visit a museum, attend church at New City Wien, and spend some time discussing how the church wants to use us on Monday.