Post Course

Hey everyone,
Last time I wrote off I was just starting my 7 week long combat engineering course which is the most important part of my training in terms of what my unit is all about. Well now it is over and here is my post about it.

The course itself was awesome. We learnt all kinds of interesting things. An average day consisted of waking up, spending most of the day in the classroom and doing little exercises. When night fell we would do workouts (we got into incredible shape, this is one picture taken after we finished a morning run by running up an incredibly steep incline that led to the summit of a mountain)

and then all have coffee together, the guys together with the commanders.

Sometimes we would have big exercises involving explosives and other really cool components. I loved the course but my fellow soldiers had a terribly hard time focusing during the classes and were constantly interrupting the instructors which was annoying to say the least especially to a university graduate. Perhaps the greatest part of the course was the atmosphere however. 

The course was on a base in a remote part of the Negev towards Eilat. Far away from the unit's base, with little oversight, our commanders really relaxed and opened up with us. There was practically no distance and we simply just enjoyed every minute, learning, joking around and getting into awesome shape. 

Another incredible part of this course, was an surprise that lifted my spirits and morale immensely. As a lone soldier, I am entitled to 30 days of time to fly home to visit family. I took two weeks in March but had two weeks left. I went to my commanders to request the remaining two weeks.Their response was that due to the operation, every week of our training was now super important and couldn't be missed no matter what but perhaps that they could find one week in November to let me fly out for. Halfway through the course, the commander of the pluga decided that he couldn't let me take that week. Needless to say I was really devastated because it meant another five months at the least before I would be able to see my parents. As it turned out however, the FIDF had raised money during the operation and was offering free flights to the parents of lone soldiers to see their children in Israel. At quite literally the last minute, I applied for the program and my parents were flown out to Israel for an incredible weekend.

I can't describe how happy this visit made me because precisely at this moment I had been in a low due to the rejection of my visit to the US and some other army stuff. It really lifted my spirits. To make things better, I also spent an awesome Rosh HaShana in Jerusalem with close family friends and friends around the city.

All good things must come to an end, however, and so we returned to our maslul (training) and jumped straight back into the thick of things. We have five months or so left and our commanders are determined to squeeze everything in. One of our first weeks back was an incredibly hard week basically meant to remind us of the very first days of basic training. We had to do everything with super short times, pushup positions, sprints you name it. On top of it all, we probably spent 9 hours each day of the week in the shooting range. But honestly, at the end of these kind of weeks you feel like you conquered the world. If you can survive this, you can survive anything. I don't regret the army for a second and honestly am happy that I am doing this now when I have the opportunity instead of settling into the all too familiar study and then find a job routine. I have all my life to do that stuff- now is the time to do the crazy and tough and inspiring experience that is the army.

Finally, in the most recent development in the army (two nights ago), my super close friend and fellow garinmate Ezra who has been with me since day one of our getting to Israel, through our draft, until now has decided to call it quits with our unit. He has been dealing with some health problems and morale and decided that combat is not for him. Its going to be really tough without the kid. Compounding all this is the fact that the final American in the unit, Shaul, is also dealing with an health issue and might have to leave us for some time, thus leaving me as the truly lonely lone soldier. I haven't really processed this yet and I will leave that to another post. 

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the long overdue post and pictures.

Nate