This is my last blog post from Israel. These past few days have been the strangest, saddest, and happiest days of my life.
Let me start by giving an update. There were two planes for going back to America. The first goes to the East Coast and the most of the midwest. The second is the California and random places flight. I am on the second flight. The people on the first flight left a couple hours and it was most likely the saddest thing I have ever experienced and has been the first time I've cried in a loooooooong time. Through leaving my friends and family in America, all the programs here in Israel, the death camps in Poland, and everything else we've done, (we've done a lot here) saying goodbye to everyone who just left was the worst. I love those people so much and am already thinking about seeing them again.
Currently there are about 30 of us left for the next flight and were chilling on the kibbutz for the day because our plane doesn't leave till tonight. This is the strangest I have ever felt physically and emotionally. I have got about 18 hours of sleep the past 5 days including 1 last night. I feel pretty nauseous from crying for a couple hours. And I haven't eaten anything today. All the crying makes you a little dehydrated and add it all up and that is my physical state. The emotional state is much worse. I already talked about loving everyone so much but it goes on for so much more. When will I come back to Israel? When will I see my friends again? Am I happy about going back to Dallas? Is EIE really ending? Did I do everything here that I wanted? There are so many questions and weird feelings going through my head right now and I don't know what to think. Right now, everything is terribly depressing and Tzuba is empty. As much as I love Israel and my friends and everything this feeling is horrible and inescapable and I want it to end. If I sound despondent, I'm not. I know I'll get over everything and life will go on but right now everyone doesn't know what to do.
I'm only sad because EIE has been amazing. I enjoyed just about every minute of it and everything has been amazing. I keep on thinking about my brother coming home and talking about EIE and talking about his friends and his experience and then I remember that we are different people. I came to Israel and had my own experience and it was amazing. I made friends with people across the country and I'm closer with some of them than I ever thought. I learned enough Jewish History to overflow my brain. (Me and my friend Andrew make Jewish history jokes all the time and no one back home will be able to understand them. Its funny because they are so nerdy and dumb but also because we understand them. Heres an example
So its shmona b'av fools day and Yochanan ben-Zaki and Eleizar ben-Yair are chilling in a mikvah getting purified. Yochanan goes over to Elezair and says "Hey! The temple is destroyed. Haha. Just kidding. Shmona b'av fools day." Yair then proceeds to stab him in the back.
If you understood that then col hacvod. What makes it funny for us on EIE is that just about everyone understood that joke, even if they didn't get every detail.) This has been an experience I will never forget and I'm so happy I came.
When I do get home there will be a few positives. (This is me being positive.) There will be Mexican food, Wilma, privacy, my family and friends. There all going to be nice and I do miss my family and friends but leaving is so unnatural. I love EIE and I'm going to try and enjoy my last few hours. I'll be in Dallas soon and if you want to meet up just give me a call or an email. I think my email is somewhere on this account. Thank you for everything and this is my last post considering I made this for my trip to Israel. I love everyone and this has been more than amazing.
Joey Blatt
