Today the trip took a different turn. We visited Yad Vashem; the Holocaust museum. It wasn’t my first time there, nor will it be my last, but this time was definitely… separated from the last time. I recall the last time I was there in eighth grade it was a very sad building with cool architechture and a lot of excessively sad or horrifying stories. This time, however, I returned with four years of German under my academic belt. To hear  such hateful words and understand them in their native tongue truly throws your perspective into a completely different area code. I never felt more disgusted by mankind’s power than I was earlier today. Let the Nazi regime be a permanent scar upon human history that reads “By no means or circumstance does might make right!” Halfway through the tour, as we all often do, I broke from the group. Allison asked me if I could give a her a tour. I tried my best to find those eighth grade memories and to piece them together with my broken knowledge of AP Euro. What my mock tour broke into was a constant marveling of Allison and I at every horrifying picture followed by every staggering quote. We separated after I wrote in the “record your thoughts” log at the end if the increasingly narrow hallway that was the museum. I had originally thought it was in bad taste to complain about my hunger in a museum concernning the Holocaust, but that didn’t prevent us all from immediately buying pastries in the nearby cafe.   Soon after we were bussed to a nearby area where we ate lunch before seeing the soldiers’ memorial cemetary. Benyamin regailed us with stories of different soldiers and their deaths, but honestly I was distracted by the remnants of my sickness from yesterday. We followed the saddness with an emotional upturn at the biblical zoo. As Rav Polstein quite astutely pointed out “Who could be sad when looking at penguins?” We wandered around for a couple of hours before we found our way to the monkeys. We then hung out with monkeys for a while. And by “a while” I mean to say that Rabbi Polstein and I Sat in front of these monkeys for the remainder of our time at the zoo before the Rav made his first awkward “yo Mama” joke at me and we left. We ate dinner at the mall and concluded the day not sadder, but wiser than we had begun it.

-Andrew Ryan Brick (ARB)