Farewells and the long journey home

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Today is the day we will bid our fondest farewell to Krakow and more importantly, to Magda, who has been a treasure to us during the past 10 days.

We begin our morning with breakfast and a time for reflections of our time in Krakow. Tom's inspiring and emotional message moves everyone to tears; it is a powerful and appropriate message to culminate this week. Following his reflections, we decide to go around the room, one-by-one, to share a single highlight of our experience in Krakow. We agree that we cannot possibly identify just one moment in a memorable week, but there were many examples cited that will leave an imprint on all of us including: the moment that we first saw the brothers eagerly awaiting our arrival on that first day at the site; the comaraderie of our team; the energy and frivolity of the Market Square; the experience of visiting Auschwitz; and of course, Magda. We were moved to tears again as Magda expressed that we have become like brothers and sisters to her yet, in all reality, we will likely never see her again, during this lifetime. She has been that rare, special individual who helped to bring us together with the singular purpose of helping to make a difference. We will never forget her.

We depart for the airport to catch our noon flight back to the US only to discover long delays in checking in and concern about missing our flight. Lot Polish Air holds our flight to allow us time to complete the check-in process, and we finally depart Poland around 1:30 p.m. for our nearly 10 hour flight to Chicago. We land back on US soil around 4:15 and due to weather delays, do not arrive home until early morning on Monday, Sept 11.

This has been a life-changing experience, and we will always fondly look back on the 10 days that we came together in Poland to help build a good home for three brothers.

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