By Ali Bohrer

As our journey starts to come to an end, we finished our last full day strong. In the morning we rallied for our final meeting of the trip as we went to the offices of AIPAC. AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobby who advocates for the complete American support of Israel. As we saw with J Street a few days ago, AIPAC similarly advocates for a two state solution in Israel, however, AIPAC’s goal is not to tell Israel what to do, but to make Israel confident and strong by fully supporting it’s decisions.  We met with three men, Jonathan Kessler, Eric Galagher, and Michael Sitra, who educated us on why we need to support Israel and how it is an asset to us and they explained how high school students like us can get involved.  As with all of our meetings some Etgarians were intrigued by what they had to say, while some of us are not buying their arguments.

After the meeting we made our way to the Jefferson Memorial to wrap up our Washington DC visit and then we headed to North Carolina. Along the way we stopped for lunch and watched the movie “Dead Poets Society” as well as bonded with each other for one of the last times.

At the hotel in Gastonia, NC, we had free time and then dinner. After dinner we had our final group wrap up. This was our chance to reflect on our entire journey and realize how after being on this trip we have all the tools we need to make a difference in the world.

Many of us stepped onto the bus on June 27^th scared of what lay ahead, but, now, on August 2^nd we have all found our voices. As Billy has said from Day 1, the future leaders of America will have been on an Etgar 36 bus and I am convinced we will prove him right. At the end of the wrap up we each received our “Etgar soundtrack” and begun to say our goodbyes. Many of us cried our eyes out because Etgar may have been the greatest summer of our lives. As this trip comes to an end we are not saying goodbye and closing the doors to the friendships we made, but instead, we rally together and realize how as an Etgar 36 community we are prepared to change the world.