Throughout my time at AMHSI I have reached and exceeded my expectations of coming here. In my first blog, I mentioned that I wanted to grow closer to my Jewish heritage, which I feel like here in Israel was the best place to do it. Also, I wanted to expand my knowledge on Israeli culture, by being surrounded by Israelis and going on tiyuls to new places scattered around Israel the culture really stuck with me.

When I came to Israel, in the beginning, I was very nervous about coming out of my comfort zone, and soon realized the people and the staff were very welcoming and many kids had the same feelings as I did. Coming to Israel was hard because I have never been away from home for so long without my family, I knew it was going to be a challenge. Before I came to Israel I was worried that I wouldn’t pick up on the language as easily as I did. Being surrounded by the language everywhere you go makes you understand a lot quicker, even though I’m not a great Hebrew speaker, I can now hold short conversations and I can understand much more than I could before coming here. Previous I was told how different the food was since I’ve never been out of America I was a little skeptical, But I have to admit, Israel has some of the best food I have ever tried.

Coming to Israel has definitely changed my view on myself and the world around me, this program has also helped me grow as a person and to be open to trying new things with new people. Now we are in the final week of our program we are all starting to pack up, it’s all coming to an end way too soon, it feels like we just got here and now we are leaving. Having to say our final goodbyes to all of our friends that we have lived with for a whole semester is going to be difficult and having to go back to America and adjust is going to be hard. But all of the memories and experiences we have learned and been through will forever follow us.