Welcome ladies and gentleman to my way of letting all of you know how my last four months have been! First, I'll give you a quick update on my life. On November 27, I started basic training in the armored corps (tanks) unit in the IDF. I had two months of basic infantry training, two months of learning and working with tanks, and one week off. Tomorrow I go back to my base to begin advanced training which means living/breathing/sleeping tanks for the next few months. One of my goals for this week off was to write a blog entry. Obviously, I am starting this entry the night before I go back.
So here's how this will work. I'm about to make up some categories. Then I'll write some stuff about each category. Here goes!
Best Story: Allow me to set the stage. Me and my platoon are in the שטח (shetach...a word that means "field" in English but in this context translates better to "middle of nowhere") during Chanukkah, training for the week. One morning we wake up and are tired, cold, and hungry. I had a pretty crazy dream that night so I decided to tell everyone about it. It went like this:
I was in the middle of a tank battle. My commander in the tank was the second-in-command and definitely the "bad cop" of all the commanders. All of a sudden he ordered me to find jelly donuts. I start looking but man I cannot find those jelly donuts! I am panicking here, and starting to freak out, when all of a sudden I find thousands (THOUSANDS) of donuts. Then I wake up.
Everyone laughs a little bit (okok, I pretty much had them on the floor with tears in their eyes), but then got back to work. Then, about five minutes later, another one of my commanders comes up to me. He hands me a jelly donut and says "Mati, I hope this makes your dream come true".
Tallest Obstacle: In order to pass basic training, every IDF soldier has to complete this big obstacle course. In full combat gear. This includes: gun, heavy ass boots, heavy ass army pack with a lot of heavy ass stuff in it, and a heavy ass helmet that goes on your heavy ass head. In addition to the obstacle course, there's a 600m sprint to start, and a 500m sprint to finish. The obstacle course has monkey bars, a rope climb, plenty of crawling, and, worst of all, the wall jump.
I hated the wall jump. I hated it so much. Once we started practicing this course with gear on, I just couldn't make it over. I didn't understand why the wall was the same frickin height for that 6'6 guy and, well, me! I really hated this thing. Even a week before the final test I couldn't get over the wall with gear on.
Well, I guess you guys can all guess what happens on the final test. But I will tell you anyway cuz it's my blog not yours.
I made it over! And got a pretty sweet time.
Coolest Zionist Moment: Even though the whole purpose of an Israeli army is, well, zionistic, it's pretty easy to lose sight of that.
Almost every week we did a מסע (Masa=journey. In this case it most definitely means a forced march done in silence in the middle of the night with all of our gear). Sometimes they are really epic, sometimes really hard, sometimes a little boring, but by the end everyone is pumped up. The last few km of each masa are done with someone on the stretcher and our whole company carrying him. Usually the commanders pick a big dude to get strapped to the stretcher. When we finish, everyone gets under the stretcher and lifts it high up into the air. We do some call and response war cries with the commander leading the masa and then put the big dude down. On one particular masa however, our officer (someone higher than a commander) was leading. While the stretcher was still in the air, he played an old Israeli song for us called אין לי ארץ אחרת, I Have No Other Country. It goes like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNkIphPfaPA
Coolest Scar: In the shetach, we have these huge rusty stakes. Once I was running and ran around a stake. Well except for my leg which decided to run through it. So now I have a scar on my thigh that basically looks like a bullet wound.
Best Tali Moment: First of all, Tali is my sister. Second of all, Tali is living in Jerusalem now! Until June!!! So my best Tali moment is when they let me leave the army on a Wednesday night and I was kinda close to Jerusalem, so I just hopped on a bus and gave her a call and said "see you in a few sis!" and she said "sweet broseph! I hope you like shakshuka!" And I do like shakshuka.
Best Sleep: At the end of infantry training, we had shetach week, or as you may recall, middle of nowhere week. This week was actually three days. We spent almost the entire time wearing all of our gear, and carrying heavy bags for a long long time. We also learnt a lot about surviving in the middle of nowhere. One of these survival tactics was digging holes for us to sleep in.
My boy Sergei and I were paired up (slash our eyes met from across the middle of nowhere) and started digging. Obviously, our commanders took us to a part of the desert that was not sand, but rocks. We dug for well over an hour, until blisters formed on our hands and our beds were ready.
That night, I was somewhat skeptical about the amount of sleep I would get, but once I snuggled into Sergei, and noticed that we were completely blocked from the roaring wind, I passed the f$%* out.
Speaking of which........GOOD NIGHT!!
