Day 1- Jenny Harris

If 35 people can in fact be called organized and smooth as they make it their way through airport check in and security, than I’d say we accomplished it. The cabs from the airport were another story. Apparently the idea of “pre-paid” isn’t clear enough because we had to fight with nearly every cab to not charge us again! Alas, lunch was ready for us at the hostel when we arrived and it was yummy. We had a little down time, which I unfortunately spent with Matthew and five students, walking from subway station to subway station in search of a friendly attendant who would sell us week-long metro passes. Don’t think it’d be that hard? Think again! Four stations later, we had them in hand. Man, I love New York! Then it was off to the Simon Wiesenthal Tolerance Center. This is a branch of the Tolerance Center in Los Angeles, dedicated to fulfilling the life work of Simon Wiesenthal, human rights activist and himself a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. The museum is designed to be an interactive learning experience to better understand the power of words and the power of images in being both inspiration and devastating. But most importantly, they stressed the power of “YOU” in making change. The final video was an emotional and powerful account of the genocides, both past and present that have occurred or, sadly, are still occurring today. History does indeed repeat itself, over and over again if we fail to learn lessons from the past. The Tolerance Center teaches those lessons to the future generations. They were quick to differentiate between tolerant and tolerance—the former being a passive state of mind pertaining to the recognition of others as different and the latter being an active state of being involving effort to learn about and understand others. In practicing tolerance, we are all working to a more just world.

The museum was amazing, but dinner could have outshined the sun. We had dinner at Carnegie Deli and a certain group of boys (you know who you are) ate more than what should be humanly possible. I was secretly proud and can say there was nothing left on anyone’s plate, which if you’ve ever been to Carnegie Deli, is a feat in and of itself. By the end of dinner, we were all exhausted and retreated to the hostel for some much needed sleep. Big day tomorrow, big day the next day, big day the next day, and I’d go on for 23 days total, but I think you all get the picture. Stay tuned, there’s a lot more that awaits Class 5 on this Transformational Journey.