I remember the day like it was yesterday. It was a rainy Sunday when I was fifteen and I was at Sunday School at my temple. There was a carnival at my high school that day and I was dying to go, but like every other Sunday, my mom made me go to temple. I was never really involved in going to temple and learning about Judaism and I went because I had to and not because I wanted to. On this particular Sunday, an older girl came to our classroom and began talking about a youth group trip to Israel. It was a trip by NFTY, The North American Federation for Temple Youth, and they took groups to Israel every summer. We watched a video and I saw some of the most amazing sights I had ever seen. I remember thinking to myself that this might actually be something I would want to experience. .
I didn't really think about it too much until a few months later when my mom asked me what I wanted to do for the summer. She suggested a camp and I suggested Israel. After a lot of convincing and a lot of research about the safety of Israel, my parents finally agreed to let me go to Israel with the group for a month.
When summer finally arrived, I packed my bags for New York City, where I would meet the rest of my group and get on the airplane to Israel. At that moment when I stepped into the airport, I had never been so nervous and scared. I was all alone and I had to walk in and make friends with people I have never seen or heard about before. I was really worried about if I was wearing the right thing or if I was going to say or do the right thing when I met everyone. I met a few girls and we got in line to board the plane. The entire plane was NFTY kids to it seemed like I was going to have a fun fourteen hours ahead of me, but I was very wrong. We flew through terrible storms almost the whole was there and the turbulence gave all the passengers on the plane motion sickness. That was the longest fourteen hours of my entire life, but as soon as we flew over Israel, everyone's mood changed.