Sunday started off amazing because I got into the helicopter training course I had been hoping for. I was with two of my friends from the week before and seemed to be with a pretty good group. It was the first time I was in a group with boys, which was different, but pretty entertaining. My mefakeds all seemed pretty cool and were very understanding of my new immigrant and lone soldier status and seemed very ready to help me out. Now each course has to do a Shavua Ra'am, which means spending one week doing kitchen and guard duty for the base. As our mefakeds didn't want to interrupt our learning in the middle of the course, they decided to do this in the beginning- meaning that for this past week I was on kitchen and guard duty.
I started out in the kitchen, which aside for the 5 am wake up, really wasn't so bad. It was mostly cleaning off tables, mopping floors, and occasionally acting as the Pudding Police and making sure everyone only took one. It actually meant I got better food, as I spent most of the week working in the commanders cafeteria. And of course, being the police, I got to eat as much pudding as I wanted.
Our kitchen crew ended up forming a sort of clique, which consisted of the two girls I knew and four boys from our course. They were all 18, and for the most part acted like it, but they were entertaining and fun to hang out with most of the time. Jackson, with the ironically American name, was the only one I really had a problem with. Jackson is from a kibbutz up north that has a lot of American immigrants. This has led him to despise American accents. So every time I spoke, he would complain, and when I yelled at him that I cant help the way I talk and he should stop being an ass, he would proceed to rant about all the horrible American traits like obesity, bad movies, and optimism. He seemed to think that all Americans are afflicted with Valley Girl perkiness. Needless to say, this tended to annoy me, but as he is an 18 year old boy, every retort I made went in one ear and out the other. So I tended to walk away from our kitchen shifts annoyed and frustrated.
This, in addition to a few other incidents, began to give me a taste of what it would be like to spend the next year surrounded by 18 year olds, and the prospect was a little scary. I have met some incredible individuals, but on a group level, especially once boys become involved, the maturity is a little low for me.
So I spent a good part of the week trying to envision a future filled with frustratingly immature friends and ceaseless taunting for the way I speak.
Then Thursday came around, and the switched me to guard duty, which was cool, because I got to spend most of my time doing whatever I wanted and just had to walk around with a gun in case they called me and needed me to fill in for someone. I was a little worried because I had been woken up that morning with a phone call from my mefaked who wanted to confirm that I was in fact 23 years old and volunteering for a year, but as this was not the first time the army called me to confirm facts I had already confirmed 15-20 times, I tried not to think about it too much. When he called me again that afternoon, I became more nervous and the next hour I spent sitting outside his office waiting for him to be ready didn't help. Eventually, I got called into the office of the Mefaked Gaf (who is in charge of all the courses in our area), saluted, and was asked if I knew why I was there. I didn't, and when I shared that with him, he started off his nice little soliloquy with "Well, you are 23" and I knew it was only going downhill from there. He told me that what I am doing is incredibly brave and that he wishes all his soldiers were as motivated as I am, BUT since I am only volunteering for a year, and our course is three months long, it is not worth it to train me. He continued to assure me that it wasn't me, it was my time, but apparently my motivation is not enough, and despite the fact that I am probably the only person in his unit that has ever cried because they had to leave, they kicked me out of the course.
So I am no longer going to learn about helicopters, which to sum up everything that went through my head and came out of my mouth, sucks. They were pretty quick about taking away my gun, and I in turn, was pretty quick about throwing all my stuff in my bag and getting off base before I embarrassed myself by crying in front of even more people. And I once again found myself being sent home by the army, with no idea what I will be doing for my remaining 10 months.
So that sucked a lot, and while I do believe that it will all work out for the best and I hope that I will still placed in a job that I enjoy and find meaningful, I am pretty bummed out about losing the opportunity to work on Apaches. Because that would have been really cool.
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