The last time I wrote an article, I was sitting at my dining room table in Metairie, LA tapping away at my new laptop, eagerly and nervously anticipating the start of my year in Israel. Now, a little less than a month later, I find myself in my dorm room at Beit Riklis on Mount Scopus, a room occupied by generations of Year Coursers for the very last time (the program plans to relocate buildings at the end of my trimester in the city).

I am surrounded by the new friends I've made, who hail from towns in Kentucky and Massachusetts to England and Israel. I can't believe I'm sitting here, totally comfortable and at ease in these brand new surroundings with people who I've come to know and respect in such a short time. There is so much more to come.

However, the scope of my experience so far in Israel and on Year Course would be entirely incomplete if I didn't go back to the week before the program, when my family and I flew to New York for a weekend for a family vacation. To make a long story short, one long story I feel I've told a million times, my year got off to a unique start--one that I never saw coming from the dining room table that day in August. You see, once we were in New York, Hurricane Katrina took an unexpected turn towards good ole Metairie and stranded my family and I in the city without a way to get back before the start of Year Course.

With everything I had just bought for the program sitting at my house, my parents and I were forced to run around Manhattan in hopes of getting me more or less prepared for the program. I made it to the airport Sunday, September 4 with noticeably less luggage than everyone else but a pretty good story to compensate for it. Although it was a little disorientating to approach this group of 400 strangers (at the time) without any familiar belongings, I was in great spirits because my family and I were lucky compared to so many back in New Orleans, and this was the start of Year Course! And that's exciting!

Once in the airport in Tel Aviv, when we entered that giant family-and-friends waiting area, Alma Book, a representative of Hadassah, and a reporter from the Jerusalem Post picked me up for an interview about what I had just gone through. I had no idea not only that this would happen, but that the unexpected inconvenience my family and I went through in New York would be of interest to a major Israeli newspaper! I was then interviewed for the radio, another Israeli paper, and the next day, two news stations.

I cannot begin to tell you how strange and random this all felt and to me, and the fact that my story kept getting less and less interesting as I told it did not help. To top it all off, I was asked to read the previous article I wrote for JVIBE at the opening ceremony of Year Course. At first, I was really nervous, and decided against it. It would be comforting to be welcomed to the program as just another member of the group in the crowd and that satisfied me. But I soon realized that I'd have to go up in front of everyone and read the article.

Year Course for me had not been, and now that is was up to me, would not continue to be something comfortable and something I was entirely prepared for. When initially new and nerve-wracking opportunities would arise, like reading at the opening ceremony, I would not back down and take the easier route because it was more comfortable. This is my year to become more of the person I want to be, and that means being outgoing and confident and doing things like reading in front of the entire program on the first night. This is going to be a year of opportunities and taking opportunities and being with new people, and doing new things and who was I to take this golden opportunity to do something I never would have done at my high school at home and throw it away! And it was a giant success--everyone loved the article!

With the difficult part of the program behind me, the very beginning, I am ready for everything that the year will bring, and everything I'll give back in return. From Beit Riklis, laila tov!