Imagine someone in Fox Chapel firing rockets into Shadyside everyday, but Shadyside doing nothing because it’s routine. This is the daily life of an Israeli living so close to their enemies. People say a trip to Israel is life changing. I never realized the significance of this until I returned home. Everything about Israel was so different from America: the people, the geography, the food, and the lifestyle. Some even used camels to get around. Coming home to America made me realize people in the Middle East live differently than Americans do. When people call a trip to Israel “life changing”, they are referring to Israel’s history. The life changing part about my trip wasn’t the history, or the two-thousand year old buildings. It was how lucky we as Americans are to not be living the lifestyle of an Israeli citizen.

I went to Israel when I was thirteen to get Bat Mitzvahed. We arrived at the modern city of Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean Coast, and were escorted to the Old City of Jerusalem by our tour guide. My introduction to Israel was everything I had expected. We drove on narrow roads filled with crazy drivers surrounded by palm trees, green grass, blue waters, and clear skies overhead. As we drove further, we sped through dirt and gravel roads surrounded by mountains of sand with gazelles and camels in the background. It seemed like we were the only vehicle driving along the gravel road through the desert- the road stretched endlessly and disappeared into a mountain of sand. We caught a glance of the fence separating Israel and the West Bank. Leaving the desert behind us, we entered an area that looked like it came out of a history book. We approached a mountain, on which was the Old City of Jerusalem. The Old City was either uphill or downhill, never flat. It was surrounded by huge brick walls, and busy people walking on either side of them. The change in geography from only a two hour drive amazed me, and introduced me to the differences between America and Israel.

The first major difference that opened my eyes is the defense mechanism. Being in Israel always kept me paranoid, especially when I saw multiple people carrying a variety of guns through a park filled with children. I found it abnormal that a man with his three little kids was carrying a machine gun strapped to his back. From what I viewed, it made me wonder about why they would need to carry around guns throughout their day. This didn’t just scare me. It showed me how they live.

Israel’s precarious location affects how they live. Near by Terrorists and neighbors state that they want to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth”. They indiscriminately fire rockets into the tiny state from only miles away. Even the most peaceful of towns track an aspect of danger. A town where the flowers and landscape is always blooming, and the sea the town overlooks is a beautiful shade of blue, the clear sky turns to grey as the trailing smoke from the army planes take over. Israel is heavily guarded with military soldiers so such terroristic events don’t happen. Any Israeli, if able, is required to pick up a hitchhiking soldier and take them where they needed to be. Expectedly, yet unexpectedly, soldiers are uniformed and in groups patrolling the area. Most heavily guarded was the fence separating Israel and the West Bank. Uniformed soldiers patrolled the checkpoint with heavy machine guns ready to fire.

Seeing the differences in lifestyles between Americans and Israelis made me realize why Israelis aren’t afraid of the day to come, like I was when I was there. It’s because what Americans would call nightmares, is a normal day to Israelis. From what I’ve learned, normal in Israel isn’t always waking up to sunny skies and birds chirping every morning, or having a night without rockets being launched overhead, or being guarded by an army continuously. It’s not worrying about what college to apply for, because after high school, they will go into the army for a mandatory service. In America, we are fortunate enough to have a choice to be in the military. All our parents have to worry about after high school is what college their kid will get into, not if their kid will even survive until they’re 21! Traveling to Israel changed me. It made my mind grasp the fact that being an American is a lucky thing, which most people take for granted.