The Final Hoorah

It's been seventeen days since we've been home. Seventeen. I don't think any of us imagined how big of an impact this trip would have on us until we got back home and couldn't really understand WHY. Why were we back? Why was it not 100 degrees everyday? Why were we not constantly surrounded by at least 20 teens at once?

These seventeen days have personally been filled by remembering endless inside jokes, anecdotes, and memories that are impossible to share or express with people that weren't part of the trip. Being asked to share my final thoughts on the Israel Summer Seminar, all I can say is this: I am beyond grateful. Not only did the Israel Summer Seminar, or ISS for short, inspire and influence me to be a better leader and citizen of the world, but it also allowed us to form friendships and relationships that I would have never imagined possible. It's easy to say, now, that we miss our Israeli sister cohort, Etzba HaGalil or Upper Galilee, just because we spent so much time with them and are now far away. But honestly, the 40, well...39, of us became a family on this trip. We ate together, slept together, worked together, fought together, laughed together. We were strangers in their homes for a few days, and then became integrated into their families, routines, and lifestyles. We couldn't speak their language, and even though most of us still can't, we learned words and catch-phrases here and there.

It's strange to think that the 20 of us from San Francisco are now either fully embarked or soon to embark on our journey into our final year of high school. In a few months, we'll be done with applications and we'll know where we're off to for the next few years. The 19 of the Upper Galilee kids, however, won't know what college they're going to or what field they will be majoring in; they'll know what field of the army they'll be going into. They'll be those men and women in the green uniforms that tourists always ask to take pictures with! And while we think about the danger and intensity of the army and they think about how odd it is that we're in school for so long, in the back of our minds, I am confident that we'll still all be thinking about each other and the absolutely life-changing, incredible, unbelievable three weeks that we got to spend together.


With love and endless appreciation,
Ari