I have carefully placed my lesson plans in a clear, plastic folder, neatly typed and ready for me to engage a class of 8th graders and one of 12th graders. I have stacked my clothes in tidy packable piles, one outfit for each day in Budapest, and I have written my list of travel toiletries, in advance of my Target run.
In my third year of traveling to the Sandor Scheiber Gimnazium (SSG) in Budapest with the SOS International Morim Limmud Project, I have my pre-trip routine running like a well-oiled machine. I feel calm and confident, nursing no qualms about my ability to teach Hungarian teenagers for whom English is not their first language or to help American teenagers for whom the daily routine will feel decidedly foreign.
And, yet . . . I still find the excitement of a new experience bubbling up as I prepare to leave. This year, seven Beth Tfiloh teachers will take fourteen students to Hungary to partner with the teachers and students at SSG in a cultural exchange that, hopefully, will help to strengthen the Hungarian Jewish community and school. Having made this trip for the past two years, I have an idea of what to expect from the rhythm of the days. The framework of the trip will feel familiar to me. This year, three of the Beth Tfiloh teachers are traveling with us for the first time, as are all fourteen students. I am excited to watch events unfold through their eyes, to learn from the fresh perspective they will bring to the group.
New for me this year has been the opportunity to help organize and structure the trip, and offer what I hope is helpful advice and guidance for both the students and teachers. I enjoy my role as mentor, one that I have developed over the years as a teacher and counselor at Beth Tfiloh. Having helped to organize the preprogramming for this trip, I am proud of our teachers who created interesting and informative lessons on Holocaust memorials, photography and political history, and of our students who have already started to write their blogs.
Our group of students and teachers will inevitably understand one another well by the end of our week in Budapest, sharing our common interests and supporting one another’s pursuit of them. For better or worse students will learn 
that I stop to pet and photograph virtually every dog I encounter, explaining to their owners that I am compiling a #dogsofBudapest photo essay on Instagram. Eventually, my group will start pointing out dogs to me; this is when I will know that they “get” me.
My hope is that through this process of traveling, teaching and learning together, not only will we “get” one another, but we will learn what motivates and inspires, transforms and captivates one another — what makes each of us desire to grow — and, through that growth, we will understand how to shorten the distance between us and expand our worldview.
