I have not written a blog in a while, but I finally have a little free time now! I left off at Simchat Torah and talking about going back to America for some time. Well, I arrived back in Israel about three weeks ago now. Now, I am an Israeli Solider. It's hard to believe I am actually in the Israeli army now! When I put on my uniform all I feel is a sense of pride in me and how happy I am to be here. Growing up and coming to Israel for months at a time, I would always see the soldiers everywhere and think to myself, "what if that was me?" or "I couldn't imagine being one." I would always look up to them, and now I am one. The week before my draft date, all I could think about is "what if I can't do it and what did I get myself into, the next two years aren't going to be fun." Of course, the night before my draft date, I did not sleep much. I was so nervous and honestly had no idea what to expect. It's hard to prepare mentally for something like this, except to think positive.
My draft date was December 10th, so only about two weeks ago. The first day, we went to a place in Tel-Aviv all day to just fill out many medical forms, dealing with our bank accounts, receiving our uniforms, and many many shots in my arm (which was really painful!!) This day was very long and tiring. We finally left around 5ish and we all got on a bus to our base. The base was about three hours north of us so it was a long ride. I slept the whole way, which was nice. We arrived to the base around 10pm. We all lined up and separated into different groups. We all had many interviews after this which lasted until 1 am. I was completely dead. I had never been so excited to sleep in my life! We had to wake up around 6 am the next day, which was not fun. So my draft date landed on a Wednesday and I left Friday morning. It was a short week, so that made me happy! Last week was my first full week, and I think it was the longest week of my life. Because of privacy and security I am not allowed to really talk about exactly what we do or where my base is. I am only allowed to talk about certain things. The most I can say is we wake up around 4 am every morning and we have class all day until around 10 at night. The classes are of course all in Hebrew, so I think it is very mentally hard. When you're only receiving a few hours of sleep a night and then you sit in a class all day in Hebrew...your mind starts to space off. I catch myself doing it a lot, but then I do anything I can to stay focused. We have many tests on all the material we learn and you must pass it. So basically all the girls are separated into groups called tzvets. It means unit in Hebrew. In each tzvet, there are probably 10-15 girls. In my tzvet, there are 11. You are with your tzvet all day. We eat together, have class together, run together, basically everything. The girls and boys are separated, so we are with girls all day. I rarely ever see or talk to guys unless I leave the base. My base I am on right now are mostly people from around the world. This base is specially for people not from Israel. I will only be on it for three months and after I will be immersed with Israelis. Anyways, because I am on this base, my tzvet is filled with people from all over. There are about four Russians, two Ukrainians, two from France, one from England, and two others from America. The most difficult about this tzvet is the language. In class many times everyone is speaking their native language, but my mifhakedt (commander) just yells at us in Hebrew saying to only speak Hebrew. It is getting easier, but its still difficult. Anyways, I am not really allowed to say anything more but I am mentally exhausted! I am finally going to sleep now!:)
