Continued…

Wednesday was a “big” day for everyone because all the soldiers are Mikveh were interviewed for either possible jobs for Jobniks or units for combat. Basically, for combat, you had to pick your top three choices. There were three lists and you had to pick one from each list. All the infantry units were on one list: Nahal, Golani, Givati, K’fer. The other list had tanks, search and rescue, and Not sure what the others were. The third list had combat engineers, Magav (border patrol), and artillery. I may have forgot some units but it doesn’t really matter.

I was, of course, at first put in the jobnik line because my profile isn’t officially a 72 yet. I waited for probabaly 45 minutes and told the officer that I wasn’t a jobnik. Nothing happened. I finally saw my commander and told him and he took care of it. A few minutes later the head officer or מ”פ came over and told me to go talk to this guy. I had to salute him and then I sat down at the desk. I spoke in hebrew to him and told him I wanted to do Nahal. He said I couldn’t because I need an 82 profile. He would only let me choose from tanks, artillery, search and rescue and one other unit. I chose tanks and search and rescue. If I can’t do Nahal, I’ll do tanks. I was at least hoping I could list Nahal. Pretty disappointing.

After that my commander came over and asked me how it went. I told him I wanted Nahal, but they wouldn’t let me list it. He asked how I felt and I told him I want Nahal, but it’s better than nothing at this point. I’ll keep fighting it until I’m on the bus to go to wherever it is I’m going.

Basically, after next week, we have to report back to base and then they ship us to the Bakom, where it all began. There, I will be told what unit I’m going into. I can either accept what they say, or refuse and demand to go to Nahal. I’ve heard stories of people doing so and they’ve either had to sit at the bakom for a week or go to jail for a week to get what I want. Not sure yet what I’ll do. I would prefer not to go to jail, but at the same time I came here to do infantry, so we’ll see. The jail I would go to isn’t a jail for serious criminals by the way. On the other hand, stories are stories so who really knows.

On Thursday, not much really happened. We had to play soccer in the morning and I hate soccer. The one time I try to get involved I hurt my ankle, but I’m okay. Later we had a kind of scavenger hunt, and had to run around the base. Afterwards, we were rewarded with getting to go up to the watchtower. it was pretty awesome up there as the view was amazing. We could see everywhere.

More to come tomorrow.

Almost done….with Mikveh Alon

Hi everyone, back from yet another week at Mikveh Alon. It was my second to last week and I can’t say I’m too upset about the idea of it being over. As I look back on my time at Mikveh, I have met a some good dudes. It’s gone by pretty slowly for most of us, as I think the majority of guys are ready to finally move on to their combat units or to their jobs.

Week in Review:

On Sunday we got back to base around 12:30 and ate lunch. After lunch I found out that I had work duty on the base. It was the second time in the past two weeks. I just had to pick up trash and it was more or less a waste of time. That was Sunday.

On Monday, we had class, as usual. It’s always pretty hard to stay awake during class and I try to avoid nodding off here and there, but it’s pretty inevitable. Throughout the day, my Moch-la-kah kept screwing up the doch 1 and when it came time for formation at night, the Sgt. wasn’t too happy. He “yelled” at us and asked us if we were a bunch of children and blah blah. He then said we had 7 minutes to get inside and change into our bet uniforms, which can only mean that we were going to run. We were punished by sprinting into lines and chets (formation) all over the base. The Sgt. then took us down to where all the extra tanks and aoutomobiles are kept and made us to more sprints. Then he stopped us and we had to do push ups. We had to go down and hold it for a few seconds or so and then we could rise up. It’s something that was much harder at the beginning of Mikveh Alon. After that we had to get into something similar to the push up position, where instead of being on your hands, you get on your forearms and hold. We had to hold for 3 minutes. It works the abs. Again, it used to be a lot harder. During it, the Sgt. was yelling at us that in a combat unit you have to hold in this position for 10 minutes. While we were holding in this position, one of my fellow soldiers, Meyer, had to write a doch 1 for the entire platoon. If he screwed up, we would have to do everything all over again. Well, he did a supHerb job and did everything correctly. We then had to run a little more and go to bed sweating.

Woke up Tuesday morning and not too much happened. Did sport. Went to class. Same nonsense. We had our last physical test that night. During the day, a bunch of guys returned from from the paratrooping giboosh (tryout). I had originally signed up for it, but was told I could not do it because my profile is too low. You need an 82. I was somewhat envious that these guys go to go do it. Even if they don’t make it, they got a greta experience out of it and I wanted to challenge myself. So I was disappointed with that.

At night, we had our physical. We had to do push ups, sit ups, and run 2K around the base. The max for push ups was 75 and sit ups was 86. I maxed out in both. The 2K run I did a lot better than the first time and finished 7th out of roughly 30 plus guys. However, a bunch of guys were missing and my time wasn’t that great. I really need to improve my run time. That was basically Tuesday in a nut shell.

Rest to come later….