Samantha Engelmyer '16 (Tzafon)

131 hours ago I returned to my small town in upstate New York after spending 10 days in the beautiful land of Israel, which I visited for the first time. When we boarded the bus at 5:45 AM on Thursday, we only recognized a face or two in the early morning light. The look of being terrified and excited because of heading half way across the world with 31 new faces, was wide spread.  

By the time the four-hour bus ride to Newark Airport was over, we were all so close already. We may not have thought about talking to each other in school, but we all had bonded over the fact that we were departing on a journey to such a special place. Some of the members of the group had already visited Israel five or six times in the past, while others had only read about it, but the moment we walked out of Ben-Gurion Airport, each and everyone of us was awe-struck.

We spent our first two days in Jerusalem, which was picture perfect. We walked through mazes of stone walls and ran up hillsides to view the stunning ancient city. After spending the weekend in Jerusalem, when we thought nothing could be better, we traveled two hours south by bus to Eshkol. There we met even more new friends and our host families for the week.

The time in Eshkol was one of the most moving things I have ever experienced. We lived lives of Israeli teenagers, so similar to us, each and every day surrounded by pure beauty. There were fields of bright red flowers in the middle of the desert, whose names I probably will never remember, and there wasn't a place the eye reached that wasn't breathtaking.

After you return from a trip as special as this, finding words powerful enough to describe the beauty and experience seems impossible. I never understood the phenomenon before, but now I do, and there is no way to describe it. One day you'll just have to go to understand for yourself too.