I think of Israel as my living classroom because the tiyuls let me experience the history of the Jewish culture. Learning in Israel is very different than the classrooms back home, we are given the whole land to explore and educate ourselves here.

In America, we learn about the history of our people but here we have our classes in the places that history happened at and we get to experience what our past ancestors went through. We aren't forced to stay in a small classroom at school in the same place every day with no change of scenery, here we do learn in classrooms but we take little field trips and move on our feet throughout the days and see the things in our textbooks come to life. We imagine what it was like in the past.

For example in my history class back home the only way they learn is from reading out of a thick textbook and making flashcards, but they forget everything after they take a test. Learning here you never want to forget anything because what you are learning about connects you to this land and your Judaism. Crawling through tiny caves is not a normal day back in the US, and that's what makes these trips so fun, these tiyuls don't make school boring because you aren't repeating the same schedule and classes every day, we mostly learn about new things every day and the teachers here are amazing and so passionate about what they are teaching. They also make school a lot more exciting, they are happy to share their knowledge with us and I never feel like I'm completely lost in the class and on the brink of falling asleep.

Hiking is a normal part of our schedule in Israel for class and it's hard going on these hikes all the time but its also extremely fun because we see these amazing views when we get to where we are going and instead of working out and doing pushups or playing football for exercise and PE we go down mountains, we go up mountains, and sometimes we hike for 4 days. These hikes are food for us because they push us more than what they would have us be doing back in America and its also quite a bonding exercise as well because we are forced but also wanting to help each other and talk to new people when we stop and take breaks along the way.