These Two Sides of My Brain Need to Have a Meeting

T-minus four days.

My room: relatively clean. My checklist of things to buy: almost complete. My bags: not packed. My mind: still not convinced I am leaving for a five month study and travel experience in Israel.

Three and half years ago I packed the same suitcase that lays in front of me now for a four month High School semester in Israel called NFTY-EIE. The program is based on Kibbutz Tzuba right outside of Jerusalem. It was my first time in Israel and I have not been back since then. We traveled around and I had the opprotunity to see all of the major sites. EIE was a great program; however, it was also a program for children. Now, at age 20, I take my suitcase on an adventure all my own. One where I can do what I want, when I want.

Approximently eight months ago I carried my enormous backpack filled with everything I needed for my five week backpacking trip through Europe. Sabrina (a girl I met once before we embarked on our adventure), Kirsten (one of my close friends that I have known since Middle School), and I went all over. With our Eurrail passes in hand, which was a bit more of a fiasco than we had planned, we went to London, Dublin, Paris, Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Brussels. We went without a concrete plan and with very little money but that did not matter. What we learned was timeless and invaluable. Still, I had no responsibilities or any difficult goals to accomplish while I traveled. In Israel I plan to challenge myself to learn Hebrew and to backpack in all alone for two weeks.

Now my suitcase and my backpack are not packed, my mind has not wrapped itself around the reality that my Ulpan at Haifa University begins in a week, and I have not gotten on the plane yet, but I am ready.