Last May-June, I went on my high school’s three week senior trip to Israel. This trip with my classmates was the most meaningful and important trip I have ever taken. While it was special and fun to be able to travel with my closest friends, it was also extremely educational and helped shape me as a person. While on this trip, we visited places around Israel of all different cultures and religions. While I went to a Jewish high school, we visited not only Jewish areas, but also Christian, Muslim, Druze, Bahai, and Bedouin sites.
There, we learned about everything about these cultures from history, to practices and even food within the culture. It was a really eye opening experience to learn about so many religions and culture, especially those that I hadn’t learned about or even heard of before. This experience took me out of my small bubble that I had all throughout school, being surrounded be people who shared the same religion and culture as I did. This experience allowed me to appreciate our differences with other people in the world and taught me to to keep an open mind when learning and meeting people who may do things differently than I do.
I also believe that this was an extremely important experience to have before going off to a big school like Ohio State. Like I previously stated, I was kept in a small bubble most of my life, and did not know much about other cultures. However, after this trip, I felt prepared to go out of my bubble and learn about even more people’s religions and cultures that I would meet at Ohio State.