Journal excerpts from trip II
01/02/04
Despite my better judgment I have turned to find myself a person who believes there is purpose in everything.
01/02/04 (1:00 am?)
Dear ****,
It is my first night here is Israel and I am on the whole feeling much better. Let me be the first to admit I was completely unfair about the people on this trip. Granted, walking through the airport and seeing over a thousand Akiba-looking kids definitely put the fear of G-d in me. I left that scene for a multitude of reasons and have no desire in me to recreate it. Once we got off the plane though, and downsized to the group of 40 that had signed up for Israel Outdoors, the people got a lot more appealing.
I guess part of that is the non-denominational nature of this particular program (one of a few unaffiliated Birthright programs). That was probably helpful in filtering out all the hardcore this or that Jews. Another part is that it is out-doorsy, so there are a lot of kids who aren’t afraid to leave the comfort of the hotel to go, say, hike a mountain.
One girl, Mindy has a חי tattoo that she got when her grandfather died. She left school awhile ago and is manager of a clothes store somewhere in Florida. Another kid Kenny, actually has six tattoos one of which is a tribute to his fiancé who died from breast cancer two weeks after they were engaged. He is currently in the middle of recording his first CD with his band. Don’t get me wrong, the majority are definitely college students who are appropriately eager at the various opportunities to indulge in liquor legally for a change (Speaking of which, it is the first trip I have been on where the leader introduced himself by saying, “I have to say no drugs but feel free to drink as much as you want so long as you don’t oversleep in the mornings”) but not all of them are your typical day school kids. Even those that remind me of people I grew up with are at least agreeable and easy to get along with. There is also a genuine excitement to be involved in the culture here by the group in general and they aren’t so sheltered that they can’t genuinely reach out of their born box (which was my biggest pet peeve about kids I grew up with back home).
I still have an aversion to huge party scenes, and being able to drink legally here is certainly going to present a lot of them. I will continue to break into smaller groups whenever possible (Dave and I spent the majority of the night playing cards in someone’s room with 8 other people) but at least the scene is not bad enough to taint the otherwise beautiful environment. And believe me ****, it is beautiful.
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