I have now been in Israel for six months. One thing I have noticed is that in general, there isn’t the same instant gratification I had in the States. When I wait in line, I really wait. When I talk to a friend or family member, we really talk. When I need to get somewhere, I sit on a bus, and I mean really sit, for hours on end. With so much time to sit and think, I notice many things that may have passed me by had I been driving in my own car and singing along with my music as the hours melted away.

There are many changes that can be seen from the window of a bus. There are slower changes, like the change in landscape. As I watch the desert become farmland and finally green rolling hills and cities, I think of changes within myself, and how long they take to root and surface. How do you measure an increase in your maturity, the amount of time it really takes for you to look older, or when you started feeling a certain way? We, as landscapes, take a lifetime to shape. It is astonishing that Israel has only lived as an independent state as long as a man ripe in his years but has managed to mature into an expansive and eclectic tiny piece of land, and it is astonishing the differences I feel in myself after being in this country for such a short amount of time.

There are also faster, more poignant changes that take place here, such as the changes in weather. One moment I am sitting in the shade beside a waterfall at the Ein Gedi nature reserve as I watch the sun drain everyone of his or her energy. A few hours later, I am trudging through the snow in Jerusalem, having forgotten what it’s like to feel the warmth of the sun. The strange weather patterns remind me of the randomness of my everyday life. Every three months I pack up and move somewhere else, embarking on new adventures, meeting new people and completely revamping my day-to-day activities.

About two weeks ago, I went to Poland for a week with some others from my program. It was not what I would call a fun-filled week, but it was, however, one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I saw with my own eyes the few remnants of what was once the most vibrant and populated Jewish community in the world. As I walked through the streets of the small villages, which were once the shtetls from which my family came, I could feel the presence of the thousands upon thousands of Jews that had lived their lives, died and been buried there.

But I also saw the reality of what happened, how six million of my Jewish brothers and sisters were murdered, burned and erased from a country’s memory. We visited the concentration, labor and death camps. We went to museums, read documents and held group discussions. It was all so hard to comprehend—the numbers, the empty buildings, the attempts at resistance and, most dauntingly, the world’s silence. I cannot say now that I understand the Holocaust, because I never will. But I can say I understand the haunting reality that just two generations ago, a group of people tried to erase the Jewish people off the face of the earth, and though they left a great, bleeding wound on our people’s past, they did not succeed.

When we landed at Ben Gurion airport after just one week in Poland, I had never been so happy and relieved to be in Israel. As the Holocaust is an undeniable part of our past, Israel is an absolute part of all of our futures as Jews, whether we plan on making aliyah and moving to Israel, or whether we never step foot on the land. What I learned from Poland is that we can create a wonderful life for ourselves wherever we are, and we can thrive. But we can never let ourselves become so wrapped up in that life that we allow our identities to be formed only according to the country in which we reside.

So now I sit in my new apartment in Holon, a city on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. I wake up each morning to screaming kids, honking horns and the overall hustle and bustle of city life. I find it difficult after three months in the desert, a trip to Poland and many other twists and turns to simply fall back into a normal routine—volunteering, Hebrew class, friends and so forth. However, I know I will have to make many, many more such adjustments and moves throughout my life. I suppose that as I move on, I will come to discover whatever else this place has to offer, and what I have to offer it.

Margy Stoner is an 18-year-old from Indianapolis, Ind. She enjoys writing, hiking, traveling, Israel, reptiles, spicy food and the guitar-campfire combination. She plans on attending Indiana University in 2008.