Dealing with army life: Shoulder on

When I last left off, my two American friends had left the tzevet and we were starting the hardest part of our training. The past few weeks have seen me do the second week of that crazy hard shooting week that I wrote about last time. It was brutal, tons of push-up position, sprints, short times and other small little rules that kept us miserable all week long though of course, at the end like always, give you great material for jokes and stories afterwards.

I also participated in a battalion-wide exercise in the Golan Heights the week before that as a machine gunner which was pretty sweet. A little more about that: I was supposed to be sent to snipers course, but they kicked out our previous machine gunner and so I returned to being the machine gunner, which meant that I couldnt go the snipers course. I am super bummed about that because the course is interesting and important.

In fact, the past month has seen a lot of factors come together to make my army experience much harder. Two friends leaving, losing snipers course, being the machine gunner again etc. You just have to shoulder on because though it is easy to fall into depression or self-pity, these emotions will only prey on you and make the army that much harder. A conscious decision to take it a day at a time and to remember that you made this decision and therefore you have to live with the consequences are what kept me from getting too upset about the whole situation.

Finally, this past weekend was our second Shabbat Garin, a year since our first one. Its truly incredible to see how much we have grown together as a Garin and as Israelis since we started the army about an year ago. We have people going into commanders and officers courses.

And socially, our Garin is super tight-knit, and everyone is pretty comfortable around each other. Its a wonderful framework though I need to get off the kibbutz more on my free time.

I know this update was a little bare in terms of details and dates but that fact is that this past month has been so busy with so many stories that it is hard to write all of them down. If anyone wants to hear more about what I have been up to they should feel free to email me at nsjaphet@yahoo.com and I would be happy to respond to their questions.