Transition from a Tourist to a Traveler

I toured around Israel for two straight months, but it wasn’t until my last month in the country that I actually got to be a traveler. After spending endless days as an American tourist, boarding busses and listening to lectures in front of old monuments and important museums, the bus driver finally pulled up to one location and told us to collect all of our belongings, because he wouldn’t see us for a very long time. I stood at the gates of the kibbutz, eyeing the dust and thick heat around me, and feared that this would be one more place where I felt like I didn’t belong. Little did I know then, as the bus pulled away, so did the label I had been carrying with me. This was one place where being American didn’t matter, and instead of being forced to witness what was in front of me, I could actually experience all that was around.

Bored? Hop on a tractor & take a tour.

For three and a half wonderful weeks, I woke up with the sun, worked with people from all walks of life, and ate dinner with young adults, from all different countries around the world. I spent my mornings working in the dining hall or the vineyard, and my afternoons cooling off in a natural spring. I learned to communicate without words, because none of us spoke the same language. I ate fresh food grown and maintained by the father of my host family, picked by a boy I knew from math class, and cooked by a girl I have been best friends with my entire life. I saw the cows being milked on my way to breakfast, and the produce being picked on my way back from work. I spent every night either around a bonfire that had been spontaneously started, or exploring a hidden place on the kibbutz with someone who had lived there all their life. I answered the natives’ questions about the NBA and Old Navy, in turn for stories about what it’s like having to share everything and how it feels preparing to enlist in the army. I saw hundreds of people eating on the tables I had cleaned and a whole business being made from the grapes I had picked. I finally felt like I was needed, after two months of getting in people’s way. I learned to appreciate what I had seen in the beginning of my trip, because I was now living where it had all started, with the grandchildren of those who had made it happen. Instead of hearing about the history of the country, I got to be part of it, as a volunteer on the first entirely organic collective farm in the world. I got to make life long friendships and experience what it’s like being a traveler in a foreign land.