I really don't want to go anywhere. But this August I'm going to Poland for an International Summer Academy to study Holocaust. Yes, I'm going to tour Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the most horrendous genocide in human history happened.
It is the place I always want to visit and to pay my tribute to the victims.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to indulge in having fun. I never go to amusement parks or beaches and don't want to spend time on leisure. My children only get to travel if there's an art workshop, a sleep away summer music camp, or invited by a relative in another city for holidays. My life is very stoic. Having been trained in the military for years if not decades, entertainment and travel for leisure make me feel decadent. I probably hurrahed too much in boot camp in my early 30s in the U.S Army. The impressions were deep. It's about enduring pain and forgo any kind of self indulgent yearning. "It's a hard knock life", like what they sing in the musical Anne. I can relate more with hard labor and death camps than ocean cruises. I was pushed to the edges not just once. There's kind of feeling of being a survivor of life but not a beneficiary.