I’m very excited to get the chance to go on a journey like this.

Six days from today I leave for four months. It still doesn’t feel real to me that I’m going and I don’t think that it will actually hit me until I’m on the plane. It’s hard to believe that less than a year ago the thought of being in Israel for a week, let alone four months, seemed like a lifetime away.

I’m as nervous as I am excited to be going. I’m anxious to leave my friends and family, to leave my house and my school, and to be pushed out of my comfort zone, but eager for the experiences to come and the friendships and memories that I know that I will be making. It’s so cool how there are going to be people from all over the world, not just from the United States. I know that by the end of this semester I’ll have friends no matter where in the world I am.

I live in this Jewish bubble in Miami; my neighborhood is Jewish, the JCC is a 5 minute walk from my house, the majority of my friends are all Jewish. But, if I go an hour from my house, things are different. I’m no longer in an area that is predominantly Jewish.

One of the things that I find most intriguing about Israel is that no matter where you go, you have this sense of Judaism all around you, not just in the little bubble that you’re living in. There are people speaking Hebrew everywhere, all the signs are in Hebrew, the shops are all closed on Saturdays, and it’s as if everything just stops on the holidays. That’s something that I’m really excited to experience.

I’m also excited to learn more about my history. There are a lot of things that I haven’t learned about Judaism and about the past of the Jewish people. I think it’s so cool that one minute you’ll be learning about an event and then the next day you can be at the site where it occurred.

During the semester I hope to make a lot of new friends, learn more Hebrew and more about Israeli history and culture, and to discover what it means to me to be a Jew. I think that Israel is the perfect place to do all of these things. I know that this will be an experience of a lifetime and I’m very excited to get the chance to go on a journey like this.