New Beginnings- an introduction

So first I should introduce myself. For those of you who don't know I'm a senior at Penn State University and I'll be graduating in August. I will be making aliyah (emigrating to Israel) in late September and through this blog I will try to document the process, articulate my feelings, and share my experiences.
Now that the formalities are out of the way I'll bring you up to speed.
My fifth trip to Israel was a 2 week adventure in early January of this year. I traveled with a group of young adults to volunteer my time and to experience something of the North of Israel in the wake of this summer's war. I spent much of the trip in Tzfat, cleaning and refurbishing bomb shelters and exploring the beautiful mountains, trails and scenery of the Northern Galil and the Golan. Along the way the thoughts of Aliyah began to trickle into my mind and eventually penetrated my heart. On previous trips I had fantasized about moving to Israel but it was never a serious option. This time it was different, I understood that Aliyah was not some far off dream and that Israel was not just an occasional spiritual playground, it was and is a special place where I could really begin a new and meaningful path in my life. With that I decided I was coming to Israel to live after college. Often people ask me why I want to move to Israel in utter disbelief and I often have trouble articulating it. What I can say is that I think of generations of family before me, living a meager existence in the cold, poor, villages of Galicia and Russia who prayed to g-d daily to return to Eretz Tzion. These poor people many of whom perished in the pogroms, the czars army and the Shoah never new of the Jewish State, never set foot on the shores of Eretz Yisrael, never walked in the path of our forefathers, never saw thousands of Jews gathered in prayer in Yerushalayim and never imagined that one day their descendant, Ethan Henshell, Yisrael ben Shmuel would do all of those things. Today I have the privilege to settle in the land of my people, to help build our nation and to ensure that we continue to be a light unto nations and for that I am grateful to my ancestors who toiled in exile and prayed for the gift I have been given.