orientation day

today was our first day completely together with the nazareth students as well as the hobart and william smith students. i'm trying my best to learn names but it is hard as i didn't know anyone going in to this trip. i am so excited about our team and finally am beginning to believe previous marchers when they say that we will become like family. tonight is my last night in my dorm room and i am sharing it with 2 girls from william and smith (tori who is from connecticut, and margaret who is from kentucky). today we got together and met up with different partners and were asked questions about why we wanted to go on this trip, what issues that we hold close to our hearts regarding social injustice, and how we will tie our faith in to this trip now and how it relates to the holocaust. we then got in to larger groups and shared what we were scared about, what we were excited about, and a few words to describe our current feelings. after dinner we listened to president braveman speak about the comparison between the holocaust and american slavery as it is a topic that hits close to home for many of our students within our diverse group. at one point in his talk he discussed passover seder and the emphasis on jewish slavery in egypt which i've thought about before but not nearly as in depth as i made connections tonight, as most of the time focus is on the holocaust. following president braveman's "lecture," professor dobkowski (from hws) took us back to a story of a jewish man who graduated medical school days before he was deported to auschwitz and the significance of that, as he took us back in the past to a picture. next dr. nowak (naz) brought us in to the future and shared her hopes for the trip with us. after all of that a few of the naz students and the hws students we are hosting for the night decided to take a walk in to the village since the weather was so nice and check out the new frozen yogurt shop, yotality. we got back at around 10:00 and then hung out in the lounge for a little talking and watching tv and funny youtube videos-typical college kid things to do! it was a lot of fun meeting some of the hws kids and starting to form friendships and i am really looking forward to getting to know everyone even better!


calling it a night even though i'll hopefully be able to sleep on the bus and plane tomorrow. our big send off is at 9:00 where i will say goodbye to my parents before i embark on this incredible journey!


if you would like to check out the school blog as well the link is:http://blogs.naz.edu/the_march/2012/05/welcome-to-the-blog.html (i personally will not be posting on here but a few selected other students will periodically)


i'll try to post tomorrow but no guarantees as we will be traveling (which means i probably wont have anything to exciting to report anyway!)
goodnight,
jill