To see the world is to see it through my daughter's eyes.

My path recently led me to Europe with my oldest daughter where we spent 10 days traveling Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany.  We traveled with youth from our region to a attend a YMCA international festival.  This blog post will be full of photos, as I have not come up with all the words to describe how amazing our trip was.  I am continuing to replay our stories and our time in my head.  I am forever grateful for the opportunity to attend this trip and watch not only my daughter, but other youth as well develop right before my eyes.  We took a group of mid western small town kids and watched them discover the world.  This was the first time for many of us to travel outside the United States, and for some in our larger group it was their first time to travel at all.

We set off on our journey on August 1st and flew over the ocean.  We arrived in Prague, Czech Republic on August 2nd mid-day.  (7 hour time change difference)

At the top of Emily's wish list of sites to see was the Petrin Tower.  We hopped off the plane and headed that way.  Once we got to the top of the tower her wish list shifted as she remembered her fear of heights.
Emily had researched quite a bit about Prague and it was fun to watch her discover sites as we came to them.  She held a lot of information about the sites  and it was nice to have a little tour guide with us to explain the sites.  And when we got turned around and lost on our way, Jessica Schasteen could get us going back the way we wanted to go.

We traveled to the Prague Castle next and we were lucky enough to arrive as they were doing a changing of the guard.  

 Seeing the love lock bridge was another one of Emily's wishes.  We attached locks with everyone we traveled with and threw the key into the river.

 The Charles Bridge was full of vendors and performers and great sculptures.  Below is a picture of Emily rubbing the copper piece for good luck.

 The John Lennon Wall was one of Emily's favorite site in Prague.  I was a little disappoint because the original art work has been covered up with graffiti. Emily thought is was neat that it was ever changing.

After we saw the sites in Prague, we enjoyed a day at the international YMCA youth festival. Emily was a "vlogger" and interviewed peers.  Our local youth did team building activities with different groups as we walked through the festival.  We all enjoyed the t-shirt exchange with different countries YMCAs.  

Our next adventure was to Poland.  We had hopes to get there because Jessica's family is from Poland and Christopher's mother was born in Poland.  We took a train to Cesky Tesin in the Czech Republic and walked across to border to Poland.  We enjoyed an easy afternoon in the town square.

We set our on a big adventure next.  We traveled into Germany with our first stop being Dresden.  Dresden was destroyed in a 1945 at the end of the war.  In 1990 the city was rebuilt and by 2005 in was completely restored.  It is a beautiful city with a wonderful story of overcoming.  You can see in the photos the old stone mixed with the new.

From Dresden Emily and I took off in a foreign country on our own!  We took several trains and traveled to meet our German cousins!  They were very generous in hosting us and sharing our family history with us.  Emily spoke the universal language of music to them by sitting at the family farm and playing the piano.  It was a quick visit, but I feel very blessed that we were able to meet them.  My mom wrote to me during our journey saying, "you have spread your wings and found your roots"  We did get to have a facetime meet and greet with my mom and her cousins, however I am hopeful she will make the journey there someday as well.  

Emily and I met back up with our traveling crew in Berlin and had a quick tour of the city.  We were humbled by the city and the history.  

Our train ride back to Prague was one of our greatest adventures.  We missed our first train out and found ourselves in the midst of a very busy train station during European holiday.  We were lucky to find the last train out Berlin headed to Budapest would be stopping in Prague.  We didn't have the correct tickets and had to sweet talk the conductors into letting us stay on the train.  The kids were exposed to a lot of different cultures on this night train ride and were happy to be back in Prague.  Our final adventure in the Czech Republic was to a concentration camp outside of Prague. (Terezin)  Emily and I did not participate in the tour.  We sat in silence and respected the memory of those that went through the camp.  

As we traveled we looked for the Rotary sign.  

We left gifts from Kansas for them as well as our Paola Rotary and district flag.

I feel extremely blessed to have witnessed my daughters first big world adventure.  I enjoyed watching her (as well as the other youth) experience and learn that we have a great big world.  Each of them grew so much in their identity and self confidence.  I can't wait until we start our next adventure.

Because the photos speak better than my words: