Turns out that what I thought was supposed to be my first week of training was a Shavua Mi-yoon, a week of more tests and interviews to determine where to put us. By this, I mean we took three tests and had one interview, had an assembly where we learned about the jobs being offered to us and spent most of the rest of the week sitting around on our butts.This was better than last week because this time I was with 23 other girls and got to spend the week being intentionally and unintentionally funny in Hebrew. Still havent gotten over the looks of shock on girls faces when they find out I am 23 either. Thats always fun.
But this week, for once, I was not the only Olah (immigrant) as there were 5 other Russian immigrants with me. This didnt really help me as they would all just speak to each other in Russian, but it was nice to have other people who had more trouble with Hebrew then I did.
As for the jobs, I am pretty optimistic since I totally rocked my tests and interviews. It helps that I am pretty much the only person that wants to be in this part of the army and that two of the tests were on english comprehension. I found out over the course of the week that to people who dont volunteer for the army, the only thing they are interested in when choosing a job is:
1) how close to home they will be
2) how often they will get to go home
3) whether there will be hot pilots around and
4) what kind of shoes they will get to wear.
This got kind of annoying as all of our "questions" time was wasted arguing about how often they would get to go home and as a result, not all of the jobs were throughly explained. But by the end of the week, I succeeded in picking my top 5 and am sincerely hoping I will get my first choice. So, what are the jobs you ask?
1) Apache technician- This is the hardest job with the least amount of time at home. You have to be able to get up at 2 am to greet the incoming copters, you get to climb all over the helicopter doing all the dirty, grungy, work and you are responsible for making sure they are prepped to fly. This is of course, my dream job, and since you need a good understanding of english (as these helicopters are all manufactured in Arizona) and I am one of the few girls that want this job, I think I have a good chance of getting it. Oh, and I am a girl enough to get excited that they will give me boots on this job.
2) Ammunition technician for the F-15I- This job was presented to us with a video that had fast music and lots of images of pilots and airplanes and basically gave no more other information other than the fact that this job is cool. All of the boys wanted this one.
3) F-16 electrician- I figured the teenagers with electrical experience (because apparently they learn things like this in high school) would get preference over me on this one.
4) Engine technician- Works on the innermost engines, but as you cant get to those when they are in the plane, there is very little next-to-plane time on this one. Plus the girl that pitched it kept talking about how much time you got to spend hanging out at the pool so I figured our priorites were a little different.
5) This was some sort of job that requires understanding how the plane was built. What they do with that information was a little unclear to me, but as it has no next-to-plane time, I dont really want it.
Anyway, that was pretty much it for this week. I am home for the weekend (which will apparently be a frequent occurrence!) and headed back to Haifa on Sunday where I will hopefully be given a job at last. I would of course not be at all surprised if that did not happen or if they decided to send me to pilot's school next as the army makes absolutely no sense. Oh! I forgot to share my story about how they army makes no sense. There was a girl in my room with a fear of planes. Like a debilitating phobia that incapacitates her when she is anywhere near an airplane. And they sent her to the air force technician school.
That is all.
Your mother wears ARMY BOOTS!!!! Oh, wait, that was you.
ReplyDeleteBeing near you sometimes totally incapacitates me, but that is more an awe thing than a fear thing. Love your updates darling, cant wait to see you.