week 3 12/19- 12/24

Sunday
12/19

Woke up after 4 hours of sleep and I made way to bus and with my luck as usual I stood up the whole ride to base. I got to base we had to take all the beds and mattresses out of the storage room like we do every week. I'm not sure why though. We got our guns back and started the week off with a first aid class. We learned all basic first aid things that we need to know.
In the middle of the class a mefaked took me out and asked me to play tug of war with them next week. So I signed up. I wasn't feeling good at all so I didn't go on the run with everyone today. It was a little more than 2k .We don't have guard duty anymore and only one person watched the guns outside at night.

Monday

We had out second day of first aid classes. It was all day. We than had a test we have to pass to get our certification card. We learned all useful basic things. We also had krav maga today, which was a lot of fun and running, pushups and other things I like. We also were trained how to fight with our gun if we need to.

 Tuesday

We went straight to the storage room this morning to get gas masks and suits. We had classes all day long on what to do in a chemical war. We had to walk around with the bag carrying the gas mask all day and we had a training exercise with it. We went to the field and had to crawl in full suit and it’s much harder to breath with it on.
 

Wed

We had classes today about all of Israel’s enemies and the different countries and how they work. Later on we had to drink around 3L of water in an hour. We also had really good food all day, scrambled eggs, grilled chicken and more. We had a 6km masa(march) and I was given the  heaviest thing to carry again, the water pack. The straps broke right when we started so I carried it for an hour over my shoulders by the strings. It was a good workout though since it was mostly uphill.

Thursday

Today is parent’s day on base. There was a speech with the commander of the base. All lone soldiers get to go to a country club with all the commanders and  we went to Ranana to a place with a spa , pool and free food for us. They had a magic show that was actually very cool. It took me 5 hours to get home from Ranana to Jerusalem with all the traffic. I went out with a friend for the night and got home to sleep I was so tired.

Friday
I woke up really early and went to go check if my laundry is dry, but its soaked still. Hope its good by Sunday. I had a few friends over Friday night. We ate and just relaxed all night.

Saturday

Amazing lunch, hamburgers, chicken wings, fried chicken, potatoes, pasta and more things. It was really good. I packed for base I'm pretty sure we are staying for 2 weeks. But I'm going to try to get off on New Years. Tomorrow wee have to be at the Kotel at 10:00 not sure why but its better for me as I live nearby.

Week 2

Week 2

The day started off with some wind and not to cold. We went to the gun ranges today, we bring all of our equipment eve time we go and have to lay it out on the ground neatly. 5 minutes before we left I took my coat off since it was nice. Now we left and it got freezing out. Already knew this was not going to be good. We got to the ranges and my hands were already dry and ears were numb. My nose I don't even want to talk about. We set up all the targets on the range and realized it wasn't going to workout since it was too windy today. We just sat there had lunch, had some classes on the radio communications in the freezing cold. My ears and every hole in my body were filled with dust and sand. We finally left to the base. I thought we were done for the day.

Three of us chosen to do work on the advanced training base for the next 5 hours.

I can barley close my hands, they are so cold. It just so happens to be the job they gave us is to clean all the garbage on the base !! EVERYWHERE .

I feel myself getting sick already. I got back to my base. Went in my tent to find dust and dirt everywhere.
All my clean clothes... dirty. Bed.... dirty. Whatever you can think of. Now by the end of the day I look at my knuckles to find that they have been bleeding from the cold. I showered ran to my tent. Put as many clothes as I can on and got in my bed. Once I sat down, puffs of dust just go everywhere... There goes my shower. Not one of my better days.

Monday
Woke up with rain all over the inside of the tent and on me. Why? Because the tents are not really waterproof, all bags on the floor are wet and some mattresses as well

Wow ..have you ever been in a sandstorm, with 60Mph winds and 40 degrees outside for the whole day and night then wake up the next morning in your tent with everything soaked since in rained... Phewww.

We went shooting again today you are suppose to have all your bullets come within a 5cm range.

 I got 3.0 for my first time ever they 6.0. Later that day we had a lesson on night shooting. We had to to an exercise later that was just ,getting all of our equipment on as fast as possible. Vest, helmet, kneepads, 6 magazines, and your gun of course and be outside. We were running in the tent and I got pushed, the top of my gun slammed right into my head. I just sat down and felt like I got hit by a truck.

I wasn't allowed to do anything the rest of the night. I had a small sized bump bleeding from my head. But it was nothing serious. I slept hoping it will be better.

Tuesday
We went back to the ranges. My shooting in the beginning was bad , then the commander corrected me on something. I got 5 bullters at 12cm, 5 more at 6,cm, then finally all 5 bullets 1.5cm, doing better. They told us there is ulpan hebrew learning classes for people that needed it . I went for the rest of the day.

Wednesday

I had ulpan today also. In the middle of the class one of the commander pulled me out and told me he wanted me to be on the commanders team on sport day for tug of war. Commanders VS Commanders and me!!

We had out first krav maga class today. It was kind of hard since I haven't done things that physical in a while. But the teacher did come up to me after the class and say he was impressed so that's good.
Went to sleep without showering. It was just to cold out to shower.

Thursday
I woke up and though I had a day off to do personal thingTurns out I didn't. I had ulpan all day again. Since I don't have to shoot anymore until next week we gave our guns back today since we are leaving tomorrow.

At the end of the week they read off everyone’s punishments for the week. It can either be stay 1 , 2 ,3 or 4 hours after everyone. Or stay on base for the weekend, which is horrible. A lot of people got the "stay on base punishment" and other with hours. Me with nothing. One of the top officers said this week he is going to take off all punishments. Since its the first week. Everyone was happy. I also felt sick this whole day from the cold. Hard to breath and stuffed up. We get off tomorrow for the weekend.

Friday
We woke up 4am and had to move all the beds , bags and mattresses  into the storage room for the weekend. The people that live in the north get to leave extra early, and so do I since I'm a lone soldier. Its great. I got back to Jerusalem at 9am!! I went to go buy some food for the apartment. I ate Friday night dinner by a family in the old city and went home to sleep I was too tired to do anything else.

Week1 onbase

Week 1
12-5 Sunday
I'm going to be writing the blog less often now but more in each one since I won't have a lot of time.
We got to the base and ate lunch, today we were assigned to our groups.
There are 3 big units , 50, 931, 932. I'm in 931 where I wanted to go.
There are 180 people in each one. Then you are split into smaller groups of 60.
I was put in group 2 . Then from there you are put into groups of 12.
My group is aleph 2. So these are the 12 guys I'll be with my whole service in the army.
They're all israelis, and one speaks some English,but my hebrew is getting better.
I like the mefaked(commander) I have he is nice but serious.
We had a meeting to discuss  the rules we have to follow and there are a lot!
I'm with one of my friends in the same 180 people but not the same tent.
One of the guys next to me snores!!! It's horrible. I have thermals under all my clothes so I'm pretty warm now and I'll be warm on guard duty.
We actually get 7 hours of sleep which is amazing and we are getting our guns on Tuesday. We met all the commanders and high ranking officers of ours.

Monday I got picked along with 8 other people to be one of the commanders "helpers for the day. We did so much!! -ammo, kitchen 3 times, bringing food place to place, carry stuff to the storage room.
We also had a long class on rules of the guns which are very strict and a class on M16 rifle. Tuesday we signed for our guns and we have to remember our gun number.
We can't put the sling on the gun until tommrow since we got in trouble  because a few people forgot their gun in the tent!!!!
We learned how to tie certain knots . We also taped all the strings on our vest so there won't be anything hanging.
We had our first minor workout. We ran 500 meters, it took 2 minutes . I thought it was a warmup run!!

Wedneday
We put slings on our guns, and it's so much more comfortable.
We had our first masa(march) with full gear, gun and equiptment. I had to carry the heaviest thing on my back. The water cooler!!
The Masa was only 30 minutes and 3km. They like starting everyone off slow
We also had to practice cocking our guns and we had to do it almost 300 times in under 5 minutes.

Thursaday
There a a shooting simulator on the base where you can practice shooting. It is very cool actually. You have to have all your bullets hit in the same spot within 5cm. I got all 5 bullets in 4.1cm the first time then the second 2.6cm. Since I did well, I got to do kitchen work the rest of the day!! So annoying.
We then had a class on the communication radio. They are made in America so they call everything on it in english with an israeli accent.
We also practiced lineups and formations for our swearing in ceremony. It didn't take too long, but we are going to practice a lot.

On Friday we had a class on the histroy of the army and then they tell us all that is going on in the news. We also have a talk with the mefaked , he asks us what was good , what was bad this week and then they change things.

Our tent has a heater that doesn't work so they took it out so gas spilled all over our tent, it smells horrible,and we cleaned it.

Shabbat dinner is at 6:30 we got there and unit 932 was also there. So each unit has there own songs saying how were better than everyone else so we were going back and forth for like an hour. Even the commanders. Hahaha .
The Friday night food wasn't so bad. I had kitchen work again. They always choose me and we couldn't  clean the dishes with the machine so we did It with our hands while evryone else was in their tents relaxing.
We have off until tommorw 6pm. On Saturday I woke up with the tent going crazy, the wind is so strong outside. There is all dust everywhere in the tent. Its hard to breath. Everything is dirty now in the tent. Evrything outside fell. Our tents are falling apart. You can't see when you go outside. The winds are crazy .I've never seen this before.  Hopefully it stops soon.
We went to lunch after , shnitzel and chulent. It was pretty good. We sat in the tent and relaxed the rest of the day. They did tell us "For every shabbat their is motzaei shabbat" so well see what happens at tonight.

We went for a 1km run, we tested our dips and pullups I didn't get a lot since I already workout out today. 31 dips, 11 pullups. Befoe dinner we had 5 minutes of lunged, that was fun.
We also had a equiptment check with one of the commanders and then went to sleep.

12-2

I woke up and found out I'm getting off today until sunday morning. There are a few other kids that have off also. They had a bus for us and they checked if our faces were shaved, boots were polished , if we had our dog tags, and ID card before we left. I got on the bus transfered 2 times and got back to jerusalem. I went to the bank to see if the army payed me . They did but not all the money they were suppose to send me. We payed our  first months rent on the apartment. That night I went out with a few friends for a little and went back to my apartment alone to sleep.

12-3 The next day I. Woke up late, Gabe and Coby were on the way home. Once they got here we went to go buy things for the apartment. There is suppose to be 120 shekels on our ID cards so we can buy stuff but it obviously doesn't work yet. We ended up spending 3 hours in the supermarket not knowing what we need and coming out with not a lot of things. But we got enough food and cleaning products which I like.
Tonight we are gouing to the Lone soldier center for hanukah dinner. We lit our own menorah in the apartment. It took us around an hour to walk there. We got there and there was a lot of good food this time, 5 course meal. They also put letters on all the tables that kids from around the world sent saying "thank you soldier's, happy hanukah" and things like that. We saw a lot of people we knew there and were invited to someone's apartment after the dinner. It was on the 18th floor, walked all the way up. We stayed there for an hour and ate more and spoke to people there, almost all were in the army . We walked all the way back down and I forgot my jacket so back up and down, phew. We started walkin home and we were with a friend that could barley walk since he just finished a gibbush (test) for a very elite unit in the army, so we were walking very slow. Took ealmost 2 hours plus we made a wrong turn. I went to sleep once we got back I was so tired.

On base Bach Nachal Tel Arad

11-29

First thing we did this morning was pray as usual. We got our bags checked and the people who are going to the gibbush locked them up. The people who are not going had dumb work to do. First we went to the field outside the base. There is a long obstacle course. So we had to make the rocks straight  for the path, just kicked them. Then we went to the tents. We had to take down a 15 person tent and put it back up. This was hard. 12 peoeple working on it for 3 hours and its still not done perferct. It got late so we went to go eat. I'm starting to like the food here its getting better. The whole day all I hear is." Isaac" "isaac", in a hebreew accent. I have a few nicknames aleady, "vitamenchik" "superman" "refridgerator" "soos" .We had a break now going to sleep. I forgo my soundproof headphones so its going to be hard.

11-30

We did the same thing today, pulled weeeds out of the ground for hours, worked in the kitchen, carried food in and out, the lunch I had was thg best lunch I had so far on a base. One of my frideds just got to Nahal he's from my aish program. So hopefully well be together. we carried things around base the rest of the day and went to sleeep. Tommorow , were doing the same thing. Next week real basic training starts.

12-1

I woke up in a different tent , I slept in a separate one since eveyone was talking all night and I wanted to sleep. We cleaned all the shooting ranges all day since we will be using them soon.  Bending down all day is so annoying. I rather run all day. Half the guys In my group sit down and do nothing though. We had good lunch as always. We sprinted evryewhere today. We went back to the ranges to finish cleaning and sat around for an hour until dinner. After dinner we needed a MASAL(a list of where everone is) so instead we brought BASAL ( onions) . They couldn't help but laugh the mifakdim walked away and then came back to punish us, nothing crazy. We all got in formation for the lighting of the hanukiah. It was kinda of funny when one of the kids was saying the brecha so evryone was laughing, even some mefakdim. We sang every song and had a little break. we got time to shower and do whatevr we want , I might be off tommroow not sure yet.