Leket, Yom HaMeah, Baror

Unfortunately, on Thursday I learned that I had racked up enough mistakes that each equalled a Shabbat, so I stayed on base this last weekend. I worked in the kitchen for lunch on Saturday, but mostly rested and talked to my family. Sunday morning, those of us who had closed and the mefakdot we were with left to meet up with the rest of the pleuga in Afula. Everyone left from there to head to Nahalal, the moshav where I went to the swap meet a couple times before my draft. We changed into half-bet (aleph is the travel and ceremonial uniform, bet is the uniform owned by and worn on the base, half-bet is bet pants with a T-shirt), and picked corn for this program called Leket. They travel to different farms around Israel and gather volunteers to harvest the parts of each harvest that is, by Jewish tradition, left for the poor. The corn we harvested went to over 500 million hungry families in Israel. It was crazy fun, and good honest work.

Shabbat on base wasn't all that bad, we were allowed time to buy ice cream on Friday afternoon

After picking corn all day, we had mud everywhere

We returned to base and learned a bit about what was going to happen the next day, Yom HaMeah. Yom HaMeah is traditionally a day of personality, social, logical, and technical testing for girls before they go into the army to see better what kind of job they should be assigned to. For us, it was a day for the girls of higher Hebrew levels to do all the same things before we are assigned jobs, but the whole day in uniform and with girls from our course. For me, I felt a little silly at first being there because it has no connection to girls wanting to go to combat positions. But once I got started, it was great. I had so much fun showing off my leadership skills, building little marble slides, and even the computer tests weren't all bad (despite how hard the Hebrew was). It was in Haifa, so it was weird being about 10 minutes from the kibbutz without actually getting to go home, but the day passed pretty quickly. We returned to base exhausted, right before bedtime. That same day, some girls had already had their combat (kravi) interviews a few weeks back, so instead of going to Yom HaMeah, they went to the Bakum to exchange their alephs for kravi alephs and kravi boots. It was hard to see them already accepted into their jobs, but I know my day will come.

The next morning, they changed some of the rules. Now, we are allowed to wear the army-regulation amount of jewelry, allowed to go for runs during our free time before bed, and, biggest of all, we can call our mefakdot by name. When I say that, I mean that we call them, for instance, "HaMefakedet Shirit," or "Mefakedet Shirit." So, from now on, M's name is now MN (initials, obviously, mean protecting her privacy). It was weird at first (okay, it's still weird), but it makes things a lot easier than EVERYONE just being "Mefakedet" or "Mefakedet [Tzevet number]." Funnier still, if we don't ask, they don't correct us or tell us what name we should call them by. So there's still a lot of "HakShev Mefakedet" (Attention, Mefakedet)'s flying around. We also earned longer times to clean up in the mornings, so it actually takes less time now than it did before (strange-sounding, I know), but ten straight minutes is less time than two sets of five because of standing attention in formation in between.

We also met some girls that used to be in our pleuga, a few courses back. It was interesting, but it was hard to pay attention. We were all thinking about what we knew would come the next morning, our fitness test. We got up before the sun and did a set of pushups and ran three kilometers. Considering we had barely had any exercise in the last two months, we all did incredible. I was very much in the middle (my number was 34, but they were missing a few so it was actually 29 or 30), but about a third of the girls didn't finish in time and the best time was about 17 minutes. The average time (my approximate time) was around 18:30-45, which in the grand scheme of things is not that great. Honestly, I was just happy I passed. The girls that didn't will have to retake it later.

"Travel with caution, soldiers are running in front of you"

That night, we finally had our driving safety program. It was so much fun to do simulations, ask questions, and lead discussions with small groups from the machlaka (my station was all about seatbelts). They really got to see me in my element, in a teaching situation, for the girls that I wasn't with on Yom HaMeah. The mem mem complimented us on our two weeks of hard work and that we took it so seriously and that the program went off without a hitch on our parts. It was such a good feeling to see the girls working together and participating without the involvement of the staff. We were really told what to teach, how to teach it, and from there the rest of the time was ours, and we felt like a properly working unit. When we got back to the barracks, some amazing people from the Nefesh B'Nefesh Lone Soldier's program had come bearing cakes, hugs, smiles, and advice. As it turns out, the American/English speaker representative was Hadar's soldier! Hadar was the mem pay (mefakedet of the pleuga) for this group of people working on Hummers, and Dganit was one of her soldiers. The world is so small...

Now, I am home for the weekend, and just two more weeks of the official course left!