Ten? Do we have ten? The group.

It's always interesting to see what student sign up for what May Terms and how the group interacts abroad. Last May, I had an excellent group that bonded during our three weeks in the fells of the Lake District. This May, I had the joy of traveling with nine other students along with Professor Keenan. Now, I have had Professor Keenan before; my very first semester on campus when I took Western Civilization. We have kept in touch since that class and it was nice to be her student again. The rest of the group included:

Kallie and Kelsey, my roommates and the other girls on the trip. Both are history majors and will be seniors this upcoming year. I had so much fun rooming with them and near the end of the trip, we started having nightly tea before going to bed. 

Alex, Ryan, Deg, Braydon, Danny, Charlie, and Brian. The boys. It was weird to be outnumbered but they were fun. Brian and I were buddies for the trip, and we had a lot of fun roaming museums and checking out ice cream favors in Krakow. When you got all seven boys together, you could count on endless movie quotes and lots of laughter. 

And so 10 was our major number. This number became even more important because on the first day, we might have temporarily split up. 

It was myself and Brian and I swear, it wasn't out fault. We had gotten into Berlin and were obviously jet lagged. It was a beautiful sunny day in Berlin and we just wanted to check in at our hotel. We found the bus we needed to take and the group had slowly begun to load this bus. Since there were so many people, Brian and I decided to head to the back of the bus. We sat down and the next thing we knew, the rest of the group was off the bus due to space issues. As Brian and I got up to get off, the bus doors closed and started to drive off. Brian and I couldn't do anything except wave at Professor Keenan as we pulled away from the airport. 

As the bus drove away, Brian and I started to laugh and freak out a little bit. Thanks to a friendly German woman sitting next to us and Brian's phone having a few international minutes, we not only figured out how to get to the hotel but also that if we got off at the first stop, we could meet up with the rest of the group when they hopped on the next bus. In the end, we were happily reunited and it became a running inside joke for the 11 of us throughout the trip. Thank goodness we know how to travel!

I think the best example of our group bonding took place at our final dinner in Warsaw on Friday night and early Saturday morning as we left the hotel. We were getting along and having a good laugh. It will be weird not seeing them all day every day this upcoming week but we will still be together to watch movies and finish up our term.

Back in the States! Whirlwind Weekend!

My trip back to the United States began at 7:30 AM (Warsaw time, aka 12:30 AM Midwest time) on Friday, April 24th. Our group did our final museums and then our big group dinner. While Warsaw rained on us, it still didn't get us down.

Upon arriving back to the hotel, most of us stayed up. I showered and packed and returned to the lobby at 3:30 AM. It's now Saturday, April 25th in Warsaw (and only 8:30 PM on Friday in the Midwest). We were driven to the Warsaw airport and boarded a plane around 6:30 AM. I was so tired that I fell asleep before the flight attendant explained how your seat belt works and where the oxygen masks are located and woke up about half way through the flight to receive my complimentary glass of water and warm pretzel and then finally woke up as the door to the plane was opening and people were taking off their seatbelts. I didn't even feel us landing! Our group had a three hour layover in Berlin and then it was time to fly to Chicago.

I slept less on that flight; watched a few movies (can't go wrong with James Bond Skyfall) and started reading a part of Primo Levi's memoir (he was a survivor of Auschwitz).

So hello Chicago! It was about 12:30 and we had exactly an hour and a half to get through customs and security to make our flight to Cedar Rapids. Let's just say things got a little tight and I got to experience running through O'Hare and jumping most of the security line to get to our terminal.

The entire group made it on the flight and by 3 PM, I was safely back in Cedar Rapids. My good buddy Alison W. picked me up and drove me back to campus. I did a bit of unpacking, threw in a load of laundry, and caught up with my roommate, Millie. Alison and I went out to grab a frozen pizza and spent the night in my apartment catching up. We both got to bed early because we had a big Sunday.

If I wasn't crazy busy enough, after I return home from my international travels, I hopped into a car on Sunday to see Elise, my clarinet buddy and friend at Coe, get married in north western Iowa. Alison and I were buddies and made it there to see the ceremony and then eat and dance at the reception! It was a lovely time and we even snapped a photo of the Coe kids who were there:

Alison and I headed back to Coe on Sunday night. I got a few hours of sleep in and then went to class this morning. It was sort of weird seeing my group in Hickok Hall instead of the lobby of our hotel. We watched Downfall, a German made movie that shows the last days of Hitler and the Third Reich. It was a fascinating movie and after writing this blog post, I'm planning on doing some in-depth research about the movie and the criticism it received. I have the rest of this rainy Memorial Day off and hope to get some good work done. After a semester of working on NYPL's Veterans Oral History and after this May Term, Memorial Day looks a little different in my eyes. It becomes a more powerful day in my eyes and I thank all the veterans who gave their lives for our freedom.

I hope to crank out a few more blog posts this upcoming week. Keep reading!

Last day in Warsaw?

Say it isn't so! It just seems we got settled in Warsaw and now I'm sitting in the hotel lobby waiting to leave for a plane back to Iowa.

Typical Hailley plan, the train ride to Warsaw was too pretty to ignore. I spent most of the three hour ride either admiring the green landscape or catching up on a few journal entries for the class. The weather was lovely on the train; if only it stayed that way when we arrived.

What has been great about this trip is that each city is very different from the others. Berlin was hip and had so many options for public transportation. Krakow was a bit touristy, had the small city feeling (despite the fact the population is 800,000), and was easy to navigate by foot. And then Warsaw. Definitely the most "Western," this city has high skyscrapers to dominate the landscape and a shopping mall right next to our hotel. Our hotel is WONDERFUL and we had numerous options for breakfast today.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. When we arrived in Warsaw, Professor Keenan's friend, Mary, met us at the train station. Mary has been living in Warsaw since September and has a pretty good grasp on the city. She walked us to our hotel (it was just a block away from the train station) and we were able to check out. Another guide named Greg met us in the lobby to take us on a walking tour of Jewish memorials in the city.

That's when it started raining on us. It wasn't horrible, but walking in the rain for four hours does start to grate on you. But nevertheless, there were still interesting memorials to see. Greg was great and knew a lot. Our night ended with dinner in the mall and ice cream.

Today we has our final two museums. First up was the Warsaw Rising Museum. This is dedicated to the city uprising in 1944. It was a fascinating museum and enjoyed by everyone in the group. This was another fairly interactive museum, which is a fan favorite. Since we loved our kebabs on this trip, that was lunch, and we ended our trip with a visit to the recently opened Polish Jewish Museum. The main exhibit isn't quite complete yet, so we were only able to tour the space and hear about what it will look like in a couple of months. We decided a May Term reunion trip was needed next May to go back! This museum details the past 1,000 of Jews living in Poland. The space is great and boy, do they have big plans.

Our final dinner was provided by the college and was made up of very authentic Polish food. It was several courses long and delicious. A great way to remember to the trip and spend time with the nine other students I've gotten to know.

I'll try to write more on the airplane to help fill in some of my gaps. But moral if this post: I've had a good trip and learned so much. The last two days in Warsaw were some of the best! Mother Nature can't keep me down!

Recap with more details coming soon!

As expected, this May Term has been amazing thus far. We have had several early days in Krakow and these long days of walking (and random rain showers) have tired me out. Add talking to my roommates Kelsey and Kallie each night before bed, and there leaves little time to blog! But tomorrow we are taking a train to Warsaw, the final leg of our journey. Our ride will be three hours long through the Polish countryside and that means it's time for Hailley to catch up on her journals and blogging!

So, since I don't want to keep you waiting forever, I'm including a brief recap of what I've seen the past two days. I'll go into more detail in the upcoming posts along with some additional posts about our group and the wonderful people we have met along the way.

On the 21st, aka Tuesday, the group went to Plaszow, a concentration camp outside of Krakow. Unlike Sachsenhausen, nothing remains at Plaszow. It's simply fields of grasses and the edge of the camp butts up to a local highway. There are a few memorials, some ruins, and a stunning statue made of stone from the local quarry. We then headed back to the city and saw a Jewish pharmacy that was crucial when the Krakow Ghetto was around. Our morning ended with a guided tour through the Schlinder Museum whose exhibit focuses on the Nazi occupation in Krakow. Our final destination for the day was the Galicia Museum and speaking with a Holocaust survivor. For dinner, Brian, Professor Keenan, and I had potatoes pancakes and walked around the city before grabbing some delicious Polish ice cream.

Then today was Auschwitz. It was an hour bus ride to the camp. We had a guided tour through both Auschwitz I and Birkenau (the site of five gas chambers and where most of the mass murdering occurred). A very moving and emotional tour which I'll go into more detail in another post. This concentration death camp is actually located right outside the city Oszwiecm. We saw the city and made a visit to the synagogue which is the oldest one still standing after Nazi occupation.

And there you have it! A brief overview so you know what I've been up too. So much more to come!

Lions, ice cream, churches, oh my Krakow!

The group managed to get out of bed and out of the hotel by 6 AM. Julie, our Berlin guru and guide helped us back to the airport and then said goodbye. We kept telling her to hop on a plane to Krakow and she said she would have if she could have.

Our flight was only an hour long and suddenly, we were in Poland! Our new guru and guide, Ania, met us in the airport and a bus picked us up. We went to our hotel to check in and drop off our luggage and then it was off to explore Krakow.

The city is beautiful. It has a population of around 800,000 people and there are many students who attend universities scattered throughout Krakow. The most iconic section of the city is the marketplace. It's one huge square and you can most likely find anything there. What we found when we first arrived in the square was St. Mary's Basilica. It was built in the 14th century (woah!) and throughout the years has collected artifacts. It was a beautiful church and very colorful. We spent almost an hour in there, listening to Ania tell us more about the history and taking in the art.

Our exploration of Krakow took about 4 hours. Along the way we stopped for lunch and later ice cream. We visited a castle in one part of town as well as the Jewish quarter. I think everyone can agree that we prefer Krakow over Berlin. While Berlin was fun, Krakow calls to us in a different way.

Of course, four hours was a long time to be walking. Professor Keenan gave us a 45 minute break (lots of the guys took a nap) before going to diner. We decided to try the Polish cuisine which turned out to be an excellent choice. I opted for grilled chicken with tomatoes, cheese, rice, potatoes, and sauerkraut. Delicious.

This was our lightest day in terms of material. The day was simply ours to explore, which was nice. The next two days will cover some of our heaviest topics and conversations. While I'm looking forward to it, I also know it will be incredibly draining, both physically and mentally. I'm looking forward to a good nights sleep!