BEER SHEVA, Israel—“B’emtzah, b’emtzah,” screamed Asif.  “Middle middle.” We are playing the Israeli students in basketball on what is a typical night for the Eshel Hanassi Alexander Muss High School students in the Israel program.

Unfortunately for me, I’m the one guarding Asif, who is a good six inches taller than I and is the best Israeli on the team. It gets worse when he gets the ball and starts to drive in.

There is nothing I can do to stop him. He drives right around me and scores an easy layup to which I curse and get yelled at by my teammates. But it’s OK because we beat them 28-20 and afterwards we shake hands and go to our respective dorms.

Ever since our group of 17 students arrived at our new home, located near Beer Sheva, a huge part of our lives has been getting to know the Israeli students on campus.

The Eshel Hanassi campus, where we are staying, is a combination of a farm, a village and a school. The school has about 1,500 kids attending it, but only 220 live on campus while the rest go to their homes at the end of the school day. The kids who stay on campus see each other every day, at meals, the farm or just walking around campus.

For the most part, when we first arrived, the Israeli kids didn’t talk to us, but observed us from a distance. When we ate meals, especially lunch, we would occupy three tables and they would put a barrier table between them and us and would proceed to watch us from a distance. Every now and then I could make out the word “Americanit” in their conversation.

The same phenomenon was also a common occurrence on the farm. The second time my block had a farming period, we showed up at the office with the other Israeli who had farming. When the head of farming asked us what animal we would prefer to work with, the Israeli students started screaming out, “parah,” or cow in Hebrew.

Working with the cows might be the worst job on the farm because they are smelly, gross and milking them looks far from easy or fun to say the least. I know a few animal names in Hebrew, so I was able to translate them into English for my friends, who were more than willing to agree with the Israelis since they don’t know Hebrew. But after hearing this, they decided to disagree with the Israelis and asked to work with the sheep instead.

These awkward interactions and observances ended when we found out about the basketball and soccer courts located on campus. These simple sports fields helped us get past our cultural differences and interact with one another.

One night, we took a basketball and walked over to the Israeli side of the campus and started playing. During the game, we got to know each other much better.

We won the game, which we always do because Israelis are not that good at basketball. After the game, we went back with them to their dorms and hung out for two hours.

In the days that followed, we started eating meals with each other and participating in activities with them at night.

Now, whenever we have farming or toran duty (kitchen duty in which you have to stack very hot plates) we talk to them, learn Hebrew and get to know their way of life. This also holds true when we travel around Israel. Wherever we go, we always find Israeli kids and go talk to them.

Now that I think about it, my friends and I aren’t really tourists anymore. Now, we are just some kids living a normal life in Israel.