Drafting on Wednesday!

Well, I have not written in a long time and so much has happened, I don't know where to begin.

Our Garin presentation to the kibbutz went quite well. Here is the video that we made (its in Hebrew however): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHa8fsEB8ts

On the Friday, November 8th, the news finally came in. I am drafting into the Nachal infantry division of the IDF. I am very happy because this division is known for having very good conditions for lone soldiers and in general having a high quality soldier. I was-and am- very nervous and excited.

Anyways, after the weekend where we presented our name, גרעין אית"י, which stands for the Land of Israel, Torat Israel, on Sunday, we went to the Palmach museum in Tel Aviv which, though I have been there already, was always interesting. We then had another interminable ceremony with Garin Tzabar and an Israeli politician, Danny Dayon. I don't know what the organization's obsession is with ceremonies, but what can you do.

That night, we were woken up in the middle of the night by our staff and were forced to do a stretcher run (where we run with people on stretchers while carrying them on our shoulders) to mark the end of the absorption period. They had an officer who was in an elite unit of the IDF run the exercise. The guy even brought a smoke grenade to make us run through. The guys carried the girls for 2k+, needless to say people were upset since we weren't in the army yet and it was the middle of the night.

Tto top it all off, the next day, that Monday was a day long competition with the organization called Acharai. This organization was the one that ran workouts for us and this day was a competition versus other Garinim. Due to certain factors, the girls of our Garin were not there so it was just guys and we had a blast. For example, one activity was to pad an egg, throw it as far as possible and hope that it wouldn't break. One of the guys in our group had a hard-boiled egg for lunch and so when they weren't looking we swapped the eggs and threw the hard-boiled one. At the end of the day, we found out that we won and we all celebrated by going crazy.

The next day, we went on our 3 day tiyul up to the Golan. We visited Caesara on the way up, and then did hikes through the Golan as well as going to a chocolate factory. It was a great time and now we are here, a few days before my draft!

I plan on visiting people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and then packing before the big day.

Nate