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