Shalooooooooooom!!!!!!

Shalom,

Welcome to NHLoneSolder, I am your author, Herbert H. Epstein. Before I get started, I would just like to thank Zachary “Dad” Reiner for his help with the tag line of the blog, “Unleashing the Killer Within: The Story of How I Went from Gerbie to Herbie.” Not sure if it’s appropriate, but it is pretty sweet. And yes, I am the formerly known as The Food Guy of thefoodguy.wordpress.com.

Ok, moving right along as one of my lower school teachers always used to say, rather annoyingly actually. A brief background about myself: In May 2009, I graduated with a BA in Print Journalism and a minor in history from a rising power in the academic world, Quinnipiac University. The Men’s basketball team came one game short of making the NCAA Tournament, FYI. From there I packed my belongings and moved to Israel with the intention of enlisting in the Israeli Army as a volunteer, which has been a pain in the ass, but I’ll get to that later. Starting August 25, I did an Ulpan on Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan which is in the north of Israel near Haifa. I lived there for five months, working three days a week and studying hebrew three days a week.  For those of you who do not know, an ulpan is an immersion program into the Israeli culture and language. There are numerous kinds of ulpans, city ulpans which are focused completely on learning hebrew and kibbutz ulpans where you live, work and study on a kibbutz. A kibbutz is essentially a community based on agriculture and other economic branches, it is a socialist community.

On the kibbutz I had three jobs: the first being washing dishes in the chader ochel (חדר אוכל). That lasted about a month until the program moved me to the laundry. Lets just say the laundry is the worst job imaginable. I folded clothes, which I’m terrible at to begin with, but my mother and sisters found amusing as washing dishes and doing laundry was a sort of pay back for the 23 years that they did those things for me. Anyway, that lasted four days, as I skipped one day and left early on another and was then luckily moved to doing maintenance on the kibbutz.

Doing maintenance was by far the best job, despite working from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., I learned some hebrew and how to become a handy man. It was also rather entertaining listening to two of my co-workers, Aviv, a kibbutznik, and Yehuda (G.I. Joe) argue all of the time. Aviv is a great guy, he did tanks in the I.D.F. and knew many words in english but spoke none. G.I. Joe, a former U.S. Marine, who is going into the I.D.F in May, is a great guy but somewhat eccentric. However, I have never met a more determined person in my life. Everyday, he would only speak hebrew and work out, determined to learn and eventually be in the special forces, something myself and others truly admire about him. Working with the two of them was a pleasure. I also worked with Danny, originally from Australia. He is an extremely hard worker and and a great guy, except that he would always call me a hick for some reason. I had a great time and learned a ton during that job.

On the Kibbutz I met some interesting people and made some good friends, I lived there until the end of January and eventually moved into an apartment with my girlfriend, Michelle, in Givatayim, the Tel-Aviv area. So that is a fast track as to where I am today as I am still waiting on the army. I will update you on what has gone on with the process and if I seem bitter and frustrated it is because I am. If I swear and use bad language, well to be honest, deal with it because all good authors do. This is a blog about my enlistment process into the Israeli Army. Enjoy. Comment. Live and as my grandmother used to say, “My cup runneth over.”

L’chaim l’chavarim sheli (לחיים לחברים שלי)