Day 3 - Meeting Champa and Party in the Bierstube

Ksenia hanging out by the lake.

Today is actually the morning of Day 3. It’s a little past 7 AM in the morning and I am about to leave for breakfast after which I still have some work to do. We are leaving today for Dachau at 8:30 AM, but I’ll report in detail about that tomorrow.

Yesterday, we listened to our first lecture by Champa Patel, Creating Inclusive Societies. Champa was especially charming and charismatic in a way that she drew everyone in and held our attention beyond the compelling issues we talked about, such as her grassroots work in her community with young kids that still have to develop aspirations that we take for granted. She’s the chair of ENIGMA youth project where she works with asylum seekers and youth offenders, etc.

After lunch we again divided into our small groups to work on our project. We hashed out last details and worked on our research. At 5 PM we went to watch the movie “What’s Cooking?” directed by the same woman who directed “Bend It Like Beckham.” It was really good, if you have netflix make sure to put it on your queue.

After dinner we had an hour’s worth of introduction to Dachau by Astrid and David. I think I speak for a large part of the group when I say that I’m a bit scared to go, a bit scared of what I’ll feel and how it will manifest itself.

Perhaps because of that or maybe because it was Champa’s last night here, a large chunk of the seminar attendees gathered at the Bierstube later that night. After I played table tennis with Jan, the German Intern, we started watching the crowd that had gathered to dance in the main room. It was quite a sight and we ended up laughing and squealing (at least I squealed) watching everyone having a blast and looking at some really fun pictures that were a result of the madness.

When I finally got back to our room at 2 AM I was too tired to draft my blog for the next morning which is why I’m writing this now. I’m off to breakfast and then a quick session with Kelly, my partner in our group for some revisions on our research, and then off to Dachau.

Oh, and there seems to be something going around: both Shiraz and Funda lost their voices, someone else was coming down with the flu, but all in all we are in good spirits and really making this the best time we can.