About every other year, the girls of Block Yeshiva High School take a spring Shabbaton somewhere in the hopes of getting to bond with each other, meet new people, and get an idea of what different cultures and ways of living there are.

This year, they picked Atlanta and were very pleased with the outcome of the trip.

“We wanted to go to a community somewhere like St. Louis, and wanted to see a different community,” said Debbie Fremerman, a member of the staff at Block Yeshiva.

On their way to Atlanta, the group stopped in Tennessee to see what a small school created in honor of the Holocaust, called the Paperclips Museum. The students at the school collected 6 million paperclips to represent the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust, and wanted to see what 6 million of anything looked like. A train car that was used to deport people to the concentration camps was one of the many items donated to the project. The girls from Block were able to go in the train car and see what it was like.

“It was a spooky experience to use those cars,” said Ayalet Ozar, a junior from Block that went to Atlanta. “It was so hot in it and we just had 30 people. So you can imagine 200 people in there.”

When the group arrived in Atlanta after 10 hours on a bus, they visited the CNN Center, as well as Olympic Centennial Park, which were only a few of the many highlights of the trip.

Because of the number of kosher restaurants in Atlanta, they were able to eat out a lot.

There was a fee for the trip, but the girls raised money through fundraisers, and sold food such as cookies and pizza, which took a significant amount off of the cost.

“Everybody got along great with the girls in town,” said Kate Friedman, teacher and activities director at Block Yeshiva. “We were looking for places that would have a lot of interesting regional things to do as well as a Jewish community which we could get to know.”

“It made a great school bonding experience,” she said.