Student and Alumni Poland Trips

Kris:

It has never felt so good to be exceptionally sore, with a sprained wrist wrapped in an ace bandage.  Yesterday, we worked for six hours and certainly got a lot done.  Drew said I could have biggest find of the day award: While I was raking up leaves and vines, I swung my rake down hard and hit rock.  Figured it was a buried, fallen headstone as we had been finding many in that area.  As I began to wipe away the dirt, there was more and more stone and I began to see a cobblestone pattern.  It turns out there was an entire path under a few inches of dirt.  It was quite the challenge to uncover it.  We had to shovel away a ton of dirt and then figure out where to put the dirt because we don’t want to cover up any of the graves.  Then, there were thick tree roots grown over the path and cutting those were quite the challenge.  But it felt amazing when the care taker came over and said that he had no idea a path was there. 

On a more personal note, we met up with the parent/alum group last night and I got to see my mom.  She’s not an alum of Albion, but when she heard about the trip, she was so excited.  I feel bad saying this, but she probably did more homework than me by renting tons of Holocaust documentaries and reading so many books these past few months.  She was so ecstatic to share with me all the things they were up to (which I’m sure you can read about in their blog).  They’ll be joining us today in the clean up. 

Well, tomorrow will be our last day in the cemetery and it will be a bitter-sweet feeling.  Then off to Krakow to experience the expansive history there.