My Year Abroad
My Year Abroad
For my awakening project I decided to focus on a year of my life that truly changed me in many ways. After finishing high school I went on a year abroad to study in Israel, the land of my heritage. This collage tells of the cultural awakening I experienced from the first second I got off the plane, and landed in Israel. The center of my project is an airplane, which was how I physically was able to travel to Israel. Especially living without my family, I feel the culture shock was much greater, because I was stuck in this strange society, without anyone to guide me but myself.
As I continued to live in Israel, I faced more differences from my simple life in America. First of all, the transportation faced me with a dilemma, which is represented by the bus ticket. I had no car, and traveled around Israel by bus. Of course it took awhile to understand the different routes, but I finally had everything down to a science to be able to travel on the least amount of buses during a journey. In addition, in Israel I was surrounded by a deep appreciation for the land, and for the soldiers protecting the country. Israel has been through many tough times during its 59 years as a country, but it has grown very fast. This love for the land is demonstrated in the picture on the tank during a soldier appreciation carnival on Israel’s independence day. Of course there is also the change in food, shown with the picture of the falafel. Although there is a lot of ordinary food in Israel, similar to American food, the most popular food is falafel. It is sold everywhere, with many different toppings.
I also experienced a religious cultural awakening. In Israel, religion is part of politics, and therefore a very central part of Israeli culture. No matter what background people are brought up with, all people in Israel feel a spiritual closeness to the Western Wall, which is why I chose to put a picture of it in my collage. There is also a cd, which is a collection of songs about the greatness of Israel, which I included in my collage as well. The Hebrew letters bordering the collage represent the awakening I was forced to deal with: speaking Hebrew. On the collage they serve as a fence, because in the beginning of the year, I felt trapped because I didn’t speak Hebrew, and this made me feel like an American trapped in Israel. However, I tried my hardest to speak the language, eventhough I was embarrassed of the way I spoke. And, by the end of the year, I was able to speak Hebrew well.
And on top of everything is the Israeli flag. I designed my collage this way because Israel is the country in which I experienced my cultural awakening.
This project truly gave me a great opportunity to reflect on my previous year abroad and help me maintain some of the important lessons I had learned.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:31 am
I definitely know what you mean since I attended yeshiva and have friends that have taken a year off to study in Israel. I agree with you that it is a great experience and there is much to be taken from it. It is an awakening in many ways. It is a completely new environment with different mentalities and values. Most importantly, religion is the driving force behind much of what occurs in the middle east. Living in a different country makes you reflect on your own culture and its positives and negatives and helps you grow as a person.