Admittedly, this blog is for me. For the past eight months I have been having the most incredible experience of my life. I have been fortunate enough to be sharing this experience with, who are now, some of my closest friends in the world. Many of them began blogging during the beginning of the year; I never picked up the habit. Prior to coming on the gap year program that changed my life, I had heard stories from alumni and sought their help in planning for my own adventure. Now, a mere twenty days before I return home, I realized that all those stories I was so excited to recreate are my stories. Instead of cataloging my year as it happened, I have decided to recall the year through a series of anecdotes.
I took a gap year in Israel, not because I wasn't ready for college, but because I wanted a year to step out of a classroom and approach life from a completely different angle. The program I joined is geared towards teaching people leadership skills, both for college and beyond. I did a little studying during the first semester, but I spent the second semester volunteering on a youth village. I spent this past year living halfway around the world, immersed in a language that was foreign to me, immersed in a culture that is misunderstood by a majority of the world, hiking with my friends, camping on the beach, learning bus routes, meeting incredible people, witnessing history, and chilling in the park with my buddies.
Taking a gap year is not a popular decision amongst American students. I respect that it's not for everybody and it certainly isn't easy to be so far away from your home for so long. I can not say that my year was more incredible than my friends who went right to school; we had completely separate, incomparable experiences and I have no way to know that. I can say that I have been having the most meaningful, educational, extraordinary year of my life.
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