Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

Well, hello there, my fellow holy jokesters! Welcome to this comically divine gathering. May your laughter be contagious and your spirits be uplifted as we embark on this humorous yet tragic international adventure! 😄🙏🎭✨

So picture this: Your 16 years old and you’re parents are sending you on an exchange program— Your first solo trip. You’re scared AF, and totally co-dependent. The farthest you’ve travelled alone previously, was Summer Camp.

Suddenly, a riot erupts just as your families car is arriving at The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. As your sitting at the gate, an announcement comes that your flight has been delayed because the Crew was involved in a tear-gas situation! Talk about a spicy welcome to international travel, am I right? 😅🌍✈️

I’m probably NOT the first to tell you this but, studying history in Israel is like diving into a time-traveling television show! From ancient civilizations to biblical tales, you’ll be surrounded by fascinating stories and jaw-dropping archaeological sites. It’s like being in a real-life history classroom, but with sandy beaches and delicious falafels on the side! 🏛️🕰️🌴🥙

The Value of Education

Alexander Miss High School in Israel the only pluralist, college prep, fully accredited program where high school students from the United States and across the globe study abroad together. Their Israel Studies curriculum spans Jewish and Israeli history, using the land as the classroom, while the General Studies department provides a multitude of classes at various levels.

It is located about 20 minutes outside of Tel-Aviv in the Southwest boarder lands of the West Bank. The valley is home to fertile farming lands and some of the most spectacular orange groves on planet earth. 🍊

If you take the time to look as their website—CLICK HERE—-Websites these days sure know how to make parents feel all warm and fuzzy about sending their kids off, don’t they? They sprinkle some glitter, add a dash of excitement, and voila! It’s like they’ve turned the whole experience into a magical adventure! But hey, let’s not forget that exploring new horizons and gaining independence is a valuable part of growing up and is suppose to be fun!

My loving parents agreed, and then consented to sending me during the winter semester of my 11th grade year. All I remember from the evening they broke the news to me is my visceral reaction and reading the ticket date through a haze of tears. Seattle-Tacoma International to London Heathrow. Departure November 30, 1999; 9:45am.

To be completely honest with the world, this is the moment I received my first actual full blown PTSD attack. For what seemed like an amazing experience, was my personal nightmare.

Little did I know that I would blackout on the car ride to the airport out of pure panic, be tear-gassed, lose all of our luggage, get stuck and end up sicker than a dog for the entire 27 hour adventure to Tel-Aviv— in front of my then best friend. Fun times 🤦🏼‍♀️🤢🤬

As SF and I arrive at Heathrow we are informed that our luggage was a victim of the Battle of Seattle and thus has been delayed with an unknown arrival time, but that the airline would make sure it got Tel-Aviv for us.

We are two 16 year old girls in a foreign country, trying to navigate without Parental guidance through international airports. Probably not the safest of ideas now. But this was back when the world thought a computer virus was going to end us all because there were more than 2 zeros.

After two extremely turbulent flights and 27 hours, we arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport, Tel-Aviv, Israel competely exhausted. I had consumed half a glass of Camomile tea and 14 French fries which I had promptly disposed of upon take-off, and now I’m in a place where the only Hebrew I know is that from the oppressive Bat Mitzvah lessons when I was 12. Looking like death and smelling of fresh bile, I was completely useless. I was barely conscious. My bestie managed to track down the only cab driver that spoke understandable English and we loaded off to the school.

Now, I’d like you to close your eyes for half a second and visualize the last Uber ride you’ve taken. Now, let’s visualize that Uber Driver thought they were the olive skinned Dale Earnhardt. Armed with a free Mercedes Benz courtesy of the Reparation Agreement of 1952, Yonaton is ready to show off what he learned from “Mean Girls”

Luckily, I only had my soul to surrender by this point and that wasn’t going to happen on a roughly Middle Aged Mediterranean cab driver.

The website has also forgotten to mention the pretty regular whistle of shells as ripped open the sky headed south towards Gaza. Luckily, the United States Public Education system still featured Fallout Shelter training in Elementary which was utilized the moment Yoni stopped the cab.

In the clearest English I have ever heard any natural born non English speaker say, Yoni screamed “AIR RAID!!!”. It felt so good to close my eyes, I don’t remember collapsing. I do remember how not so good it felt to wake to the nurse pulling the driveway gravel from my left leg.

Welcome to the Holy Land!

It’s now December 3, 1999.

The world will end in 28 Days

It has been almost 5 days since I had seen or heard from my family. I had left them somewhere in the midst of the WTO riots, been tear-gassed, vomited my way across the globe, achieved a 8g turn at 210mph in a cab and played dodgeball with a mortar round.

I was fairly convinced they had paid this place to try to off me. It would have been less messy than getting the mob involved, but there was no way they were going to put out that much cash for an international legal team. We are, after all, Jewish. 🤣😂🤷🏼‍♀️

I also didn’t understand that there was a 10 hour time difference. Once I did… you bet I’d call at 2am. I had also pierced my tongue, but we aren’t talking about that.

The next 28 days I spent doing schoolwork. In my time off I was doing everything my parents would never approve of. Who cared? The world was about to end once the clocks turned over. Y2K Baby! Plus the legal drinking age was 16, since everyone serves at 18.

Thanks for joining me on this virtual journey. It’s been a pleasure reminiscing about the amazing experiences and memories made along the way. Until our next travel tale, stay curious and keep exploring, my adventurous amigos ✈️🌍🌟