I am still catching up on sleep, and mostly running on adrenaline and caffeine at work. My masters classes are also winding down so I have been running to catch up in time for finals next week too!

We landed back in the USA on Monday afternoon, April 28, which feels like AGES ago. I enjoyed a spacious seat on the second floor of the Boeing 747. Air France hooked us up with champagne and surprisingly good snacks. Of course I enjoyed a baguette and cheese with my wine for one last time! My bed, my family, the dog, DD ice coffee, the shower, my morning commute, chicken for dinner…it is all the same again and yet nothing has felt as monotonous or as dull as it had seemed before I embarked on this trip. I know that I needed a break from the norm, but I was surprised at how happy I was to be back into it! I thought I would have a hard time getting back to my regular routine, and although a large part of me wanted to keep traveling on into the “new”, I was relieved to come back to the “usual”. It was…comforting, and I even felt refreshed despite my physical fatigue. I feel revived emotionally and mentally. I hope this new outlook is sustainable! I do feel strongly that it is. It is as if I have left behind some baggage. And yet, all of my bags came home with me.

female student : Miss, you got kids?

me : No. No I don’t. Why?

fs : I was just wondering. It seems like you do.

me : Gotta get that boyfriend first, ya know?

fs : My uncle’s a good resource!

me : (LOL)

fs : I’m just saying…You have my house number, Miss.

Yesterday one of our teachers invited her friend to visit our school and speak to our students about his experiences as a concentration camp prisoner and survivor. He is an 85 year old Polish Jew who survived the Krakow Ghetto and was liberated from the Mathausen death camp on May 5, 1945. His story was shocking, sickening, inspiring, and saddening, made all the more vivid to me by my connections with my recent trip to Germany and Poland. He recalled his final moments with his mother and 13-year old sister before they were shipped to the gas chambers from the train station I stood in on the Krakow bike tour. He described the barracks, many of which I saw on our tours of Dachau and Auschwitz, and how they slept and were worked to death at Mathausen. He admitted that he suffered greatly from the guilt of surviving, along with two of his brothers, and that the one thing that inspired him to fight to live was the tremendous hatred he felt towards the SS. He hated them for not only the way they treated him and his family, but for the horrors he witnessed them enjoying, and for the battle he nearly lost inside his soul to maintain his own humanity and the integrity to still believe in the good will of humankind. He ended by thanking the kids for listening so intently and respectfully, for telling his story is a part of his own healing process. As so many survivors are approaching their own natural deaths, it is a privilege to be able to witness their accounts first-hand.

Learn more about the Mathausen death camp.

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Originally uploaded by msradden

That may have sounded all romantic, but it was actually a business meeting I set up with my contacts overseas in the UK. Julie Slater (pictured, left) and Kim Walton (pictured, right) from the Outwood Grange School in the UK met me (do I have to say, pictured, middle?!) Sunday in Paris to plan an international exchange between our two schools. We are super psyched about it and are kicking it off with a Leadership Exchange between our teachers the first week in June. Participating students and teachers will (hopefully) use the Ning social network tool to manage their virtual exchanges and culminate the project with a travel experience. AND, I did manage to carry that big umbrella to the airport and through customs and recovered it at Logan. It is an Outwood Grange tradition that the umbrella be pictured with all international students and teachers. I couldn’t say no!