Living here is like being at camp.

It is like being at camp for a long, long time. And there's no visiting day every two weeks. No homemade cookies and care packages from home. Some days are exciting and fun while other days just make you want to run into the woods and hide... except there was always poison ivy, so that's not too fun. Supposedly people who, unlike me, weren't the lone Bostonian in an oppressive New York environment like Moshava made zillions of friends they would wait all year to see again. Though my guess is they didn't really realize what great friendships they had until they had been home for a few weeks, and when they would return the following summer I think sometimes they'd subconsciously realize that maybe ten months of distance was a good thing.

Living here is a much more positive camp experience for me. I have friends, though I have even better friends in the US. Every day when I get home I rush to my laptop to see what's going on with them and tell them the latest news in my life. Thank goodness for email and immediate communication. I don't know what I would do without it.

This is all, of course, entirely different. I am the family member anxiously wondering what's going on back home. And I'm the one who's going to visit in a few weeks and just by being there be worth so much more than a care package on visiting day. I will have a brief three weeks to do the most that I can to help keep things even the slightest bit under control.

Then there's the life I'll be leaving here while I'm away. Who am I going to miss? What am I going to miss? How anxious will I be to get back? Going back home will also mean leaving home. This is my main life now. It's not just a ten month stretch between summers. When I see my friends at Maryland will I be full of stories from Israel or will I dive back into their world and my life with them?

The next few months will be interesting. I've been here for six months, and in five weeks I am leaving for three weeks in the US. About ten weeks after that I will be returning again to the US for the summer so I can make money and, you know, afford to live. I have to no doubt that it will be both physically and emotionally stressful to bounce back and forth like that. I just really wonder what I'm going to miss, in so many ways and for so many different reasons.