Using Summer for More Than Vacation

Using Summer for More Than Vacation For high school students, summer vacation is a three-month recess to forget the pressures of teachers, homework, grades and tests. For many, it is a time to seek out the sun and engage in some fun. But for others, it also is a period of learning, self-discovery and growth: It’s that first job, a memorable trip, a long-term project or goal attained after hard work. Sharing their memories, high school students wrote essays or talked with DEBORAH BELGUM about their summers.

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DUSTYNAMY STERNBERG, 15, of Northridge, a junior at Hart High School in Newhall, spent five weeks in Israel with a group of 34 teenagers from different Jewish summer camps across the United States.

One afternoon we were headed back to our youth hostel in Jerusalem after touring the Dead Sea. As we got close, traffic completely stopped. Sirens were all that could be heard and angry people could be seen everywhere in the streets. Our bus driver and Israeli counselor turned on the radio. The whole bus was silent as they began to cry. Then they told us that two bombs had been set off in the marketplace we had been planning to go to the next afternoon.

[Back at the hostel], we saw an Arab getting beaten by about 10 Orthodox Jews. After the soldiers had broken up the fight, a chant arose from the crowd below us. I asked my Israeli counselor what they were saying and she responded, “Kill those Arabs.”

Soldiers began staying in our building because it was cheap and close to the action. We spent most nights that last week awake talking to the soldiers, and every day it became obvious that these boys were no different from me or my friends. Except for one thing. In a few months they may be dying for a country that will never see peace.