Malone Service Learning - Poland

A very early start. We should be home in about 22 hours! At gate in Krakow.

Our original plan was to view a couple of cathedrals, perhaps the royal castle, maybe a walk through a dragon cave, and then spend the afternoon shopping. [caption id="attachment_567" align="alignleft" width="275"] Long climb[/caption] [caption id="attachment_566" align="aligncenter" width="246"] Make a wish...[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_565" align="aligncenter" width="552"] Roman ruins, castle side buildings[/caption] Well, the Wawel Cathedral made this list, and the rest (sans shopping) was shelved for a princess ride in a hosedrawn carriage for the four young women who have served so well these last few days.  We'll meet up again for dinner, ready for that 4:15 a.m. departure for the airport, and a long day of travel on tomorrow's itinerary. [caption id="attachment_570" align="aligncenter" width="401"] Princess ride[/caption]

Last night, we bid goodbye to Gosia, Julia, Martyna, and Jeremiaz.  Today, we said the rest of our goodbyes when Daniel and Tymo dropped us off at our Hotel in Krakow.  It is amazing how some people can enter our life deeply in such a short space of time, but the Masarczyk family certainly did just that, and it made parting quite sad, for us and for our wonderful hosts.  Rather than dwelling on that, though, here is a bit about our day. Our final service project was more English language classes at another school where the four women from Malone did presentations for middle school students about education in the US and their hometowns and students practiced English with them through interactive exercises and games.  Dr. E. spent time with younger students, doing games that helped them practice basic vocabulary and  tenses.  Of course, being anywhere in Poland also means that you have to have a nice meal before you can leave, so the school provided us with a very nice meal of a grilled ...

We started off our day with our usual breakfast of cold cuts, but as a special treat Dr. E got us donuts upon our request. After having breakfast we went to a mall where Dr. E had coffee with Daniel and two other Polish pastors while the four of us girls went shopping. We looked around for a little bit and then went to Auchan, a grocery store similar to Wal-Mart but in the middle of the mall. We got LOTS of chocolate to take home! Most of our day was spent at Wyższa Szkoła Biznesu w Dąbrowie Górniczej, where we were invited to be part of their International Day.  We represented the US, while other students from Turkey, Ukraine, Armenia, Nigeria, and Poland represented their countries.  The day began with the Turkish national anthem on lead guitar, followed by the Ukrainian national anthem on bass, and the Star Spangled Banner on alto sax. We watched a presentation from two Turkish students and then gave our own presentation focused on the education system in the U.S. as well as where w...

Today we spent most of the day in Tarnowskie Góry helping teach some of the children English.  After the usual cold cuts for breakfast at Daniel's church, we sped to Asia's house (we were running a tad late) and then followed her to the school.  Daniel dropped us off there and Asia gave us another rundown of what was going to happen.  Nothing really prepared us for what happened (which is basically always true when making plans that involve children).  When we walked into the main school building and there was a banner that read "American Day."  Talk about feeling like movie stars!  A lovely lady named Dominica was introduced to us and right away she gave us the itinerary, explained the activity, and then the kids arrived.  Karleigh, Sarah, and Jordyn were each assigned a group of kids and they were in charge of helping the students understand the words and teach them how to pronounce them correctly.  It was Carrie's job to listen to all of the children pronounce ...

The students are busy preparing their presentations that will be used for the next three days as we work with primary, middle school, and university students, so they asked me to write today’s blog.  Today was filled with fellowship, food, and laughter.  We left the hotel at 9:15 and headed to church, where we made our traditional Polish breakfast of cold cuts, cheese, bread, jam, coffee, tea, juice… and Karleigh’s staple of banana with crunchy peanut butter.  After cleaning up our dishes, we enjoyed the service at the church that Daniel leads.  About 80 people pack into a small room.  Everyone shakes hands with everyone else when they enter the small room used for worship.  Daniel and three other people led the music, some of it familiar in melody, but none of it familiar in words!  Carrie and Jordyn said that they could sing the English tunes to a few songs, and all four of them kind of stared at the to-us-largely-indecipherable Polish words. There are several parts of the service wh...

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Weisel,  Night Today we visited Auschwitz. It is hard to put into words what we felt and experienced. The Holocaust is something we have all learned about in school for a long time, and a couple of us have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and read memoirs written by survivors.  This experience, however, was much different because instead of learning about something that happened in another country before we were born, it was something that happened on the ground we were standing on. Going into the day, we expected the visit to be emotionally difficult but were surprised at how distant we felt. Even though it was right in front of us, what ha...