Getting to Newark Airport, I was so nervous I felt sick. Like, palms sweating, overthinking everything, nervous. I mean, who wouldn't be? You're about to get on a bus with a bunch of girls you've never met and live with them for almost two weeks.

A few days into CLTC, we got our mock chapters. At first I felt like the people were nice, but I didn't really know a lot of them. It was kind of surface level. I liked them, but I didn't know them yet.

Until suddenly, it wasn't just that I liked them; they had become my best friends. Just like that. It didn't happen in one big moment; it just happened in all the small ones in between. Sitting next to each other during meals, staying up too late, figuring out the schedule together, being delirious and laughing about things that weren't even that funny. Shayachut BBG #48 became my second home. Not in a cheesy way, just in the way where I actually felt at home there. 

I found myself constantly looking forward to mock chapter time. To just sit in a circle and talk nonstop about nothing and everything. About home, about BBYO, about random things, but it brought us closer. Laughing together and yelling bible at literally anyone who would listen or wouldn't. And the laughing especially did not stop when the Shlicha committee was supposed to be planning out Saturday Shabbat rock painting pugged in service. We were supposed to be planning, and we were just... not. We were just being us, and somehow it still worked out, given that over half our CLTC came to our service.

That's the thing I miss the most. It wasn't just the big programs or the moments that were supposed to be meaningful. It was the in-between stuff. Walking everywhere together, debriefing everything, having inside jokes after like two days.

Then on the last night, we had our mini Good and Welfare. We all sat there and just... said what we actually felt. No joking around, no trying to be funny. And I remember looking around the circle and getting hit with this wave of like, oh. I love these people; why do I have to leave them? It was weird because I knew we were all going to still talk, but it wasn't going to be the same. We weren't going to be sitting in that circle every day anymore.

Saying goodbye the next morning was one of the saddest goodbyes I've had, and the worst part is no one tells you how weird it is to go back to your home BBYO chapter after being in a BBG chapter at CLTC. Part of you is still there and still in a BBG chapter. You go back, and everything is normal, but you feel a little different. Like you left a piece of yourself at CLTC and brought a piece of Shayachut home with you.

Anyways, Shayachut BBG, I'll see you at IC or Perlman 2027?