Shirit's Awesome Adventures: Soldier Girl

סוף סוף אני חיילת!

(Finally I am a soldier!)

I will have to apologize in advance, this post will not be as long and exciting as you might expect (probably a low ratio of pictures to words), but life since last week has been absolutely nonstop. Until Tuesday night, I was making sure I had everything I needed for the army while still attending classes and going to work! Of course, the real excitement began Wednesday morning when I arrived at the Navy Museum. Two friends from the kibbutz came with me, and when I arrived, my friend who was a staff member on my Birthright trip met me there before her class. I wasn't there for long before I got on the bus to the Bakum, or army processing center in the Center of Israel.

There was a REEEAAALLLY big boat

On the bus to the army processing center

There was a lot of traffic, but when we got there, we already were required to start calling people "Mefaked," or commander, and stand in double lines. Most of us turned our phones off and put them in our bags (like we were told), and thusly did not have them for the whole time we were there, so I don't have any pictures. It wasn't that exciting, just a lot of things to get done, like getting our photos taken, getting vaccinated, and talking to a career officer. One line I even had to wait for over two hours, but it gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people. Everyone had a different order of the path they had to take in order to make sure that the lines were not overloaded, but everyone's last stop was receiving first our IDs, then bags, then trying on our uniforms! We all looked so different, a lot more mature, with our uniforms on. From there, we waited some more, and then got on a bus to the base.

My friend from Peru and I, our first picture in uniform

The whole ride was interesting, in that we had to sit a certain way, and we learned what to do in case of an attack, being an official military trip. When we arrived, it was already fairly late at night, but we got down to business. We were separated into small groups (a tzevet), and began learning the rules, how to speak to commanders, and filling in information.

I was so exhausted and confused, but made sure I took a full-uniform picture for my family

For two days, we wore the same uniforms (they gave us more, but hey, it's the army!), stood in formation, ran here, walked there, counted, counted, counted, and said, "Ken, Mefakedet!" (Yes, ma'am!) probably five hundred times. We only have an hour for showers, phones, and changing before bed, so I have almost no pictures. What I can tell you is that my Mefakedet is really cool. She tells us when we do something well, and when we don't, she doesn't yell. Somehow that makes us feel even worse about not doing the right thing becauase we really want her to be proud of us! Because of what is called distance, but I call Distance, we don't even know her name or anything about her. When we speak to her, we have to say certain things to show respect (but are not necessarily polite, very strange is the Hebrew language!). Unfortunately, she is our orientation mefakedet so we change our tzevet and everything tomorrow. Also, you can see in the photo above that I have these really awesome boots. Sadly, this is not true. It wasn't until I got onto the base that I realized that these boots are a size too small. The first day I thought they were supposed to be that tight, but when I realized while I was getting ready for bed, I was horrified. Everyone, I mean absolutely everyone, had said to triple check your shoe size at the processing center, and that I did not do! The next morning, me and one other girl told our mefakedet that our shoes were too small. She promised we would receive new ones that day. Over the course of the day, we were told to wait longer and longer, until about two hours before we went to sleep, they said we could change to our civilian sports shoes. We had to also get permission slips to show to the military police to make sure we don't get a ticket over the weekend. Hopefully we will get proper boots tomorrow because I look pretty silly with my pink sneakers!:

It's been a lovely weekend, but also very busy because my friends all wanted to see me in uniform, so I even ate lunch in it, even though I was home at the kibbutz! I have to go to sleep, now, though, because it is very late and I am back to the army tomorrow morning. I'll post again soon with more coherent stories!