Blogging at the Airport

So here I sit on the floor of the Toronto airport and I look around at this amazing team and am in complete disbelief that it has only been 24 hours that we have been together on this journey. I literally feel like we have all known each other for months and have been traveling for nearly as long. We are already tired, but wow, are we energized.

This morning we awoke early and began our day with an all group orientation—the 70 Canadian students and 40 American Students were all together for the first time. Four hours after the start of orientation, I had numerous students come up to me literally blown away by the powerfulness of the morning sessions.

We were mixed up into random groups and did group exercises that included a welcome and introduction of the staff and then the students, ice breakers, a classification exercise where we all had to decide how to classify ourselves around a large room into one of the following groups: Nationality, Ethnicity, Religious Affiliation, or Gender. We then had to discuss why it was difficult to choose only one category and discussion about whether choosing one category excludes the other categories, and about whether or not others would classify us the way in which we classify ourselves. In relation to the Holocaust we addressed how the Nazi’s placed a classification upon people and based on their categorization or grouping, the victims were persecuted.

Next, there was a phenomenal activity in which we were given a ‘dilemma’ in a group, and we had to position ourselves in a line (continuum)—and then discuss with someone whose view point was opposite of our own. So for example, one dilemma was “Is it ethical for modern day medicine to make use of the significant amount of medical research obtained as a result of experiments conducted on prisoners throughout the Holocaust”, another was “Was it okay to use capitol punishment for Nazi perpetrators?”

We listened to Michael Soberman speak on Canada’s response to the Holocaust, which provided the Americans with a great parallel to the discussion we had with Michael Dobkowski last night. Michael Soberman left us all with a story that spoke of a king asking a riddle of sorts to a ‘servant’—And the riddle was “What makes a happy man sad and a sad man, happy?” The response is “This too will pass”—and so he told us to be comforted this during our hard times on our journey and to relish in the good times—It was a beautiful send off…

Okay, hopefully I will be able to upload pictures soon—But, right now, I am going to go get ready to board our plane for Paris…..