Closing shabbat with bed bugs.

pheww. finally i'm home, or the closest to home i've got right now. two weeks on base, hmm that's something i'm going to have to get used to...

There is alot that gets done in 2 weeks on base, and as usual i'm sure i'll forget the majority of it...but here goes anyway....

Manny and I on our chilled shabbat (just after floor yoga)

Ultimately our time was made up of "training" for שמירה (guard duty) and then consequently us doing שמירה. It was interesting...not always so much fun, but good anyway. 

Blog update: I am currently at Daniel's apartment and literally 5 seconds ago said "can i have ice-cream, look how much blog i've written...like a sentence" 
Daniel laughing "yes, no ice-cream till you finish your blog". 
if that's not motivation i'm not entirely sure what is! 

Our training was more of 4 or 5 lessons regarding how to guard, and what to do if stuff goes down. And here it is: you guard in 2 hour shifts (a bunch of different places, some with walking some with just standing), 24 hours a day the base is guarded by us. We guard wearing our vest, 3 magazines-each with 29 bullets, a helmet (heavy!), 2 maymiya's (that's the army bottle, only about 750ml), our gun, and of course the obvious stuff...dog tags, army id, and uniform...but stupidly our hats aswell...at night! what is the use of that?

I guarded in total something like 9 times, all throughout the day/night or perhaps more...who knows? 
In-between guarding shifts we did alot of things that were quite obviously just time wasters. Repeating lessons (had tests coming up), free time in the form of sit here and wait.  

Half-time ice-cream break 

ok break time over...

What i forgot to mention was that before we did guarding duty we had our shetach. Which was basically a day where we went to the shooting range and did a little of running around, a little jumping on the ground into positions. To be honest it was a lot of fun, but quite tiring. 

As it turns out i'm not such a bad shot..which is a good thing i would say. But anyway, in Oketz we will defiantly do a lot of practice...a lot lot more than we did here. 

We did do a hell of a lot of other stuff, lessons, tests, running around, eating bad food and yeah we also had shabbat and rosh hashannah here. Which broke up the 2 weeks up very nicely. For all the days we had off apart from a morning, afternoon and evening chet (which could be in pajamas), we had free time (and guarding)...meals were substantially better...there was even red meat. I may have gotten so excited that i piled my plate with only meat and demolished it all. 

what to tell...? My guarding was mostly rather boring as Dad and all you guys in Csg will know, it's a lot of standing there trying to remain alert when its just so easy to tune off completely. Which also was quite nice; to have 2 hours to yourself (some positions were a single person guard) to think and just be alone..that was nice.  One day though i was guarding at a point where you can see the roads at the bottom of base, the bunker and the yamach (where all the tanks, and a second gun storage shed are) this was at about 9pm...And i saw a car turn off the road into a field which i wasn't completely sure about. The car was driving very slowly and eventually parked and turned its lights out. Being not completely sure i radioed through and explained as best as i could. 

Svetlana and I, leaving base (happy times)

The story ended with the mefakedet hamachlaka and mefakedet hacors both running over to investigate what exactly i was on about. It was very dodgy, 4 cars all doing the same thing and then a torch light in the area quite close to the base border. Ultimatly it was nothing, probably just a bunch of young guys meeting up to smoke or something. 

I bet your wanting to know what i'm on about with bed bugs...here goes. Everyone's body is covered in bites. the end. Maybe it's solved now, we all gave back our army blankets (lovingly called scabbios's...quite literally after the disease) and moved rooms. Though i kind of think the room move was already going to happen. I think maybe they sprayed, i mean i don't think i got more bites the past few nights...it is kindof hard to tell with the multitude i already had!

I'm actually having alot of trouble remembering what exactly we did the 2 weeks on base, so if i remember i will write another blog titled "important stuff that i forgot" (don't get excited...hard right?)

This is 1/4 of the whole group--ceremony held at Akko Prison Museum

As for the fun stuff, yesterday we had our ceremony to mark the end of basic training.It was held at the Akko Prison Museum a really interesting place, we had a tour before! The only problem was that it was hot. Very hot, stood for 3 hours or something in direct sunlight, could actually feel sweat dripping down our backs, and no one had water. In the end parents and family started to hand us water...even though we weren't their kids. Which i am very very appreciative for, i think otherwise some serious cases of heat stroke would have been had. 

The ceremony itself was hard, i was standing right near all the family and friends, which consequently was at the opposite side from the speakers...Turns out that i understand even less if i can hardly hear and there is a lot of other talking happening around me. So that sucks a little. 

The swearing in was hard as a lot of the words were difficult. Unfortunately i'm not able to find a word for word translation, but here's what i took the oath to mean (and therefore what i swore to, for me). "I give my word to serve Israel, to loyally and unconditionally love the land of israel, to follow the commands of my superiors, without question, and to use all my strength, even to sacrifice my life in the defence of the homeland and the freedom of israel." This was said all together and after we went soldier by soldier, line by line up to the commanders in charge, held a gun in a special way (wish i had a photo...) and a tanach (or whatever your religious book was) over your heart. This was followed by different mefakedet hamachlaka's (i think) saying group blah blah do you swear and us yelling at the top of our lungs "ani nishbaat" (I swear).

Ah yeah. Before the swearing in ceremony a soldier from each tsevet was awarded for going that bit extra, for being the best soldier in that sense. Of course that doesn't mean they are better, just that they stood out more or something.  I was very happy to be awarded that for my tsevet. I did most things, but some things were hard. I just never thought they noticed,...i guess it's true, the army notices everything...It is a great relief though to know that they all knew my name because they thought i wasn't too bad. not just because i'm the only ginger or incredibly naughty or something like that.

ON THAT NOTE: in our break time the other day, i discovered a mefakedet just sitting there watching us...apparently that happens every break. I need to watch what i do!

Well in general life, hopefully this thursday i'll be getting my army apartment. I spoke to the misha kitash (like the army social workers), about it, and pretty much i go see the place, if i like it it's mine. That'll be great really, they are apartments in regular places (this is cholon--near tel aviv), with 6 lone soldiers, 2 to a room. get given groceries twice a month and everything is paid for. This i think suits me perfectly, if i'm only home 3 times a month it makes no sense to rent a place...no sense and no way!

Anyway, i'm off now...daniel has curtains that require putting up. 

Wishing everyone an easy fast tomorrow, 

Lots of love, 

Louise 

  

life with a big ass gun

You wouldn't believe it, but i got it wrong. It's this weekend we got off, and next week that we're on base for 2 weeks...i mean it's crazy to think i would misunderstand them. What with the excellent explanations in a language i totally 100% understand. WELL whatever, ultimatly what i means is, i'm free again. :D

Not too much to report--don't worry--this was a very short week, only sun till wed but it was a very hot and grumpy one.

The big ass gun:

Sunday began rather early for me as i had to leave Daniels at 5.30. Luckily for me i managed to convince him to drive me...even though, and again you won't beleive it, I got us lost! hahaha you'd think i'd learn. But nope.
Did a little sprinting to get to the train, was to meet my friend on there but all is well and good...thank god i'm a lucky person.
We were to meet at Carmel at 10am, and stress free arrived early, which was really lovely because it meant i could see the boys. Ok i'm not exaggerating here, i never ever see them on base. The army has made extreme measures to keep boys and girls seperated...at Mikve Eilon anyway. But yeah, it was lovely to see them to catch up...from what i've heard they seem to get very different treatment than the girls. More like you'd imagine it should be.
At base we did the usual waiting around, little bit of running in lines, little bit of shouting, little bit of me saying lo ivanti (i don't understand) and a little bit of me feeling a lot of sorry for my sleep deprived (perhaps still a little shicka) self. Actually it was really quite hilarious.. so my tzevet (group) i'm not particularly fond of. I won't say its because their mostly russian, because as i said i do have russian friends which i really really like! but it's more because of our communication. It's like we can not do anything at all succesfully. But i decided i'd talk to my mefakedet and ask to change. I thought i'd ask to move to tzevet 1 (i'm in 2 now) because their based on hebrew levels. that's right you heard me, i'm in 2 not bottom!!!! Thought to ask that, but really because i like the people more. Our conversation went like this:
Me "hi, is it possible to change to tzevet 1"
Mefakedet "why?"
me "the hebrew is too hard, i understand nothing, you talk too fast and i understand their mefadet better"
Mefakedet "NO, their based on the tests and interviews you've done and you did well...well done"
Me "i have no idea how"
Mefakedet "louise you're doing well, tell me when i'm speaking too fast and i'll slow down"
Me "all the time"
blah blah blah
The problem with this conversation is that my hebrew improves ten fold when i'm drunky or super tired. i was a little of both so that conversation was fluent. too bad it's not all the time!
Oh on that note, after we left the army last week Yasmeen (a friend) and myself went to buy the essentials that i didn't realise i'd need. for me that's an extremelly manly watch, long running pants (but not tights--do you know how hard it is to find something like that?) and i think that's all i got. But i was so tired (i'd woken up at 3 that morning) that i was chatting away to all the shop people in hebrew, no problemo...well i mean felt like no problemo...meh.

Eh, what else did we do on sunday..yep got our guns. Sounds fun. It's not. Their heavy, big, irratating, and in the way. Oh and you have to take it everywhere. I mean in the shower you have to leave the curtain open so you can see it 30cm's away from you. You sleep with it under the matteress...oh funny story. When i sleep in the army i don't just sleep i pass out. So i had put it under the matteress and usually i sleep next to it kindof..this night half my body was on it...i;d planned on moving...princess and the pea (almost!)

The rest of the week was alot of lessons, alot of running for no point, alot of crankiness and also 2 talks in my group about how we'd fix our situation (of not getting it together)...they mostly ended with we need to only ever talk in hebrew...always follwed 5 mins later by russian. Yup.

Did some laser firing, not sure the point of that...like a normal gun but with a laser thingy at the end...but hey 6 out of 6 (though i'm pretty sure the first one didn't hit and she let me do an extra one)
Did a fitness test thingy, as much as you can do from 86 sit ups, 48 push ups and a 2 km run. i was fairly pleased... did 86 sit ups (could have done more!), 34 push ups (should have pushed harder), and came 2nd in the run. Which is all well and good but next time i need to come 1st to improve. Ah the pressure!

A little gun krav maga...too much talking and not enough actually doing anything. Eh some other stuff...oh  yeah this was fun: we did first aid. YEah. that's right turns out its a bit harder in hebrew.

Food again was horrific, though my friend (maya)'s birthday was sunday so she brought cake (hey i've got no oven to bake one with), so that was nice! But overall i'm having a great time. A little freaked out that all the mefakdot know my name... my friend Shayna was saying that at night they all go through their notes of the day (at 1.14pm maya forgot her bottle, at 2.34pm louise had her gun around the back of her. etc etc) so i had a freak out about why they knew my name. do i always do bad things??? i really hope it's for good reasons. I mean apart from my laughing outbreak i think i'm a pretty good soldier. Though i do have a LOT of trouble staying awake in classes. Saying that, they never tell me to stand up, i always ask first. so at least they'll know i'm trying my hardest.

But i'm at Aviva's right now. Aviva is a friend of Grannies.. i stayed with her last time i was in israel..was so excited to see her and the family again. Tonight we're going for dinner at her son's house. So i must get ready.

Tell next time (which is deffinatly 2 weeks this time)
Sorry for the lack of photo's there are a few from base but not on my camera...need to round them up. (how do you say photo's in russian?)


Oh, funny thing i forgot. Yesterday was our yom siddurim which is basically a day you get every 2 months to organise things. Go to the bank blah blah blah. My mefakedet rang me at 8am and basically told me to get moving...apparently i do NOT understand much when i first wake up. But then we were on the phone on and off all day. She even ended up talking to the phone company for me. So nice. was funny to tell them though "eh, can you speak to my mefakedet please".

Soldier Louise--first week

My first weekend of, so very much to tell, I’ll tell from the very beginning…hopefully I don’t forget any of the important stuff. The problem is every day is at least 18 hours long so you do so much each day, but I’ll tell you that soon! 

 

Pre-Day 1

Last week of civilian life consisted of stressing, ringing Mahal people every single day, talking with my new friends who are doing the same thing, stressing with my new friends, running, sprinting on the soft sand beach with an extremely fit new friend (rather fun), and the very last few nights a steak meal and last beer of freedom. 

Day 1

Was meant to arrive at 8am (though the Mahal guy only rang me at 4.55pm on Thursday afternoon—equivalent to Friday afternoon, exactly the very last possible moment.) so arrived at 7.30…. Everyone knows my talent for getting lost, so not only had I already made the route so I knew it by heart, I left early.  Was tired and hungry, too excited to sleep the night before and too rushed to eat in the morning.  Met with my friends who also had arrived early, lined up to say “look here I am” and sat to wait for our names to be called. After my name was called i jumped on the bus which took  me to Bokom. Bokom is the induction centre basically. There we spent the entire day which consisted of oh so much confusion; little did I know that would be everything from then on.  Minus the large portions of time walking to ‘ruk shum, yashar’ (just there, straight) which was never just there and infact was usually not even straight down the corridor, the day consisted of the following:

• Id photo 
•  Dna (they stabbed our finger, like for checking blood pressure, but then squeezed it for 5 minutes consistently rubbing it on carboard to soak it up….this ended up being the most painful thing of the day)
• Vaccinations (enourmous needles, given whilst a line of people watched)
• Small blood test (to put us on the bone marrow register—this was optional)
•   Interview to give bank details etc
• Teeth x-ray (for ID)
• Finger and palm printing (ID again, this was really fun) 
• And then of course, uniform. I got the following; 3 formal uniforms, 5 white shirts (for under formal), pair of boots, 4 pairs of socks, biuret (plain green to tell the world that you’re brand new), belt, and a bag of random things which included pepper spray,  toothbrush, ear plugs and I have no idea what else.

After that we basically just waited. Sat all together (little did I know it was the last time I would be able to talk to my new friends since they were all boys) for about 3 or 4 hours we were waiting. It turned out we were waiting for all the other people from all the other places to arrive and finish their id etc. Even people from Haifa etc, that’s because Bokom is the main centre so everyone had to come. Our lunch though was DELICIOUS num num num.

We jumped on the bus then to go up north to Mikve Eilon, our home for the next 3 months. The girls I was on the bus were 95% Russian, a couple of americans, 2 other Australians, a couple of English girls and then a handful of random other countries. Found out where later! (Italy, Cuba, France, Parugay, and I’ve forgotten where else.) It turns out though that the Russians aren’t all from Russia, there are heaps from Ukraine, even Armania, Kazakstan (other stans…), they just all speak Russian.

 I actually can't remember what we did on base... For sure i slept on the base there though, i guess we put our bags in a pile and then moved off to eh, can't remember. Maybe a induction lesson. The main point is that everything and i mean EVERYTHING was in hebrew. 100%, even 1 on 1 interviews in hebrew. There was simply no option for english. That night we only went to bed at 11.30 or something, so clearly it was a full night of activity i just can't remember what.

Rest of the week

 I'm lumping the rest all together because i don't remember what happened when. But what you need to know is, a lot of lessons where i understand about 1/4, a lot of sitting and really trying hard to keep my eyes open, going through different periods of tiredness (stages go, super slow, eyes closing by themselves, hysterical and very serious). Especially the hysterical stage does not work too well when you look around and see everyone else having the same eye shutting problem. One day i could not stop laughing i got thrown out, then when my mefakedet (commander), asked me what was so funny i honestly had no idea. Even funnier though was she was saying "do i laugh when you speak to me" but unfortunatly the word for past tense laugh and past tense remember are very similar, so my tired brain went to "do i remember what you say when you speak to me" so i'm there going ken ken (yes). 

We met different people, including the rasap, this girl who honestly looks 15 if that but with such an indredible glare. I'm not really sure what rasap is in english but higher than the commanders so i don't know an officer maybe? She made us run from 2 lines, to a chet (in the israeli army absolutly everything is in chet which is a letter in the alphabet) about 50 times. Made us do pushups and basically just showed us she was in charge. I actually enjoyed it found it hilarious all the sprinting from one spot to another but all the girls were whinging. OH GOD. The girls....how did i not say this yet?  actually another subheading later. prepare yourselves.  Hmmm what else did we do this week, let me think....... Ah had some lessons on guns (we get one on sunday), talks from different commanding people can't remember on what...as i said i don't understand too much yet. Got the rules, got told what is asoor (forbidden!), got told about 100 times it's forbidden to hitchhike. Even got shown a horrid video in which a soldier tramped (what they call hitchiking) and got killed...i say horrible because of the acting. Horrific to sit through. 

But basically our week consisted of lining up and putting our bottles next to our feet and attempting to make them all line up straight (because of the russians that hardly ever worked), standing in a chet, yelling the time, yelling ken hamefakedet alot, me losing my voice a little, having no time to do anything and bonding. 

The Girls:

 So...i did not realise how much culture effects people. And this is not 100% a perfect reflection of each individual russian. But so so pushy. example: we get 20 seconds to run from point a to b, stand in 2 straight lines with our bottles straight all whilst yelling the time (first in ten second intervals from 1 minute but then 10,9,8...) they will walk and then right at 3 seconds push in infront of you. Simply because they want to stand next to their friend, not caring at all that it screw up the entire line, that we don't have time and that there is a perfectly good spot at the end of the line. When i say push i don't mean squeeze in i literally mean push. The most frustrating thing though is they don't speak english, and  my hebrew isn't good enough to effectively yell at them. That is just a small example, there are many many (oh so many) more, but lines apparently are not used in russia or the surrounding countries and ultimatly they come off as very rude. But saying that, i've made friends with two russian girls who are just amazing. (neither of them do the pushing thing...) Michelle she speaks quite good english but we decided to only talk hebrew to each other to learn faster she's amazing (and also so cool...her eyes are different colours!), then Svetlana--i think she does know english but we also only talk hebrew. Unfortunatly her hebrew is amazing and mine is well....not so much that way. 

The rest of the girls are fine. I have made some great friends already, it's just that everyone is there for different reasons. Most girls have already been in israel for 2 or so years, they've already done ulpan (hebrew school), and alot are basically fluent. In fact, my hebrew is amongst the worst.  A lot of them want to do jobnik jobs (a jobnik is an office position, or that sort of thing), and there has been so much whinging and whining over what i see as absolutly nothing. I mean, the mefakdot aren't even giving punishments at all yet, (which by the way...i hate. i figure if they make us do pushups thats training at spaced out intervals!) 

The Food:

They say that most girls gain alot of weight in the army because of the food...i see why. Everything is excedingly super salty (funny to see people put MORE salt on top), they have cake at every meal and it is all carbs. I on the other hand think i'll end up losing weight, why? I don't particularly like spongy cake therefore haven't had any, the food is so salty that it's not appealing so every meal i basically only eat cucumber, tomato and white cheese (israeli thing i think, not exactly sure how to explain it). 

OH but worst of all, there is no coffee.....if you've met me you know i love my coffee and how hard none at all must be, i'm sure my body is thankful for the break though, no coffee no alcohol and healthy food...not too bad. 

Hebrew:

Day one i understand around 2%, and each day that increased by 2%. It is very different depending on who's talking but i think that give it a few weeks and i'll understand enough to be fine. Saying that, the mefakdot talk in a very simple way, repeating alot and using alot of gestures...so it is very good environment to learn...but i guess that;s the whole point of the ulpan at mikve eilon. 

It was pretty funny though, yesterday we got to go "home" for the weekend (or really just for saturday), woke at 3am and i was so tired that even talking english i would accidentally use hebrew and not even notice. In fact we had to go shopping to get things that i had no idea previously that we needed (i went with another girl from my group), and i was talking to the shopkeepers without any breaks (well ok...maybe a few) almost like my tiredness was effective to get rid of the barrier of worry about getting it wrong. 

Expectations for the coming 2 weeks:

The next two weeks we're on base, it's called a shabbat... because you're on base for shabbat. I expect things to step up. Physically i hope we'll  do more, i hope their will be punishments for things i hope it will feel more like an army and less like a school camp. I expect sadly that the food will remain horrible, that i will increase my hebrew skills, that i will learn to (excuse my english), shit, shower and polish my shoes without too much problem in 7 minutes. That i'll break the communication barrier with the russians and that i'll have a great time. 

Overall:

Even though this blog consisted of alot of "bitching" i had an excellent time. It was very hard mentally; it's very frustrating to not understand what someone is saying to you. It was tireing (cured by a 11 hour sleep from 22:30 last night, but great. I can't wait though for my hebrew to improve and to move to a unit where everyone wants to be there and there is motivation. That's what is lacking now, no one is motivated, they don't want to be there infact someone told me that alot of people purposelly fail their hebew test so they can spend 3 months of their service doing lessons they already know. But i've got my initial gibush (they physical and mental test if you want to do a combat unit) in october and for sure after that everyone that's in a combat unit wants to be. 

Sorry for the length of this, hopefully i didn't bore you... if it's any consilation next time will probably be double the length (2 weeks worth...though that depends on what i remember!). 

Lots of love 

(oh am currently staying at daniels...trying to find a place to live permanantly-for the few days i'm home every month-not as easy as you'd think with one hour to make calls and shower a day always around 10pm.) 

Your soldier, Louise.