Last full week at Mikve Alon!!!

I forgot to mention last week that now I have been in Israel now for 6 months!!!! How time flies!

I just had my last full week at Mikve Alon. Next week all we have is our ceremony and on Tuesday they are driving us back to Bakum - which is where you go on your first day of the army. Apparently we spend a hell of a lot of time practicing for the ceremony and being bossed around by an angry fat guy called the Rasar. This week we pretty much wrapped up the course. We had our final classes, a competition between all the tzevets, and gave back all our equipment. This week was a bit crazy because whenever a course ends, people stop caring (that is under the assumption that some people actually started caring). Aside from the stupid people who are acting like idiots all the time, now it has been taken to a new level because we are finishing the course. It's frustrating at times, but now also quite funny some of the things people are starting to do.

We put on a show for the entire pluga displaying some culture from where we all came from. As I mentioned the course is for people who were not born in Israel and made aliyah or volunteering and their hebrew is not that good. So there were people from literally all over the world - North, Central and South America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Russia, India and even the Phillipenes. Some of the skits were informative, others hilarious, and some downright violent (and I'm not talking about us Canadians playing hockey). The people from the countries that end in 'stan from the former USSR explained and demonstrated the best way to kidnap a soon to be wife. The Americans sung and danced. The French put on a skit where 2 American tourists were taking a tour through Paris. Then all of a sudden they got mugged by hoodlums who pretended to beat them up. The only problem was that one of the 'American tourists' that pretended to get hit in the face didn't get up from the floor because he got punched and blood was running from his nose like a faucet. Luckily he was okay, but if it wasn't for that incident our skit from Canada would have been the funniest. I don't think anyone has a video of the kid getting knocked in the face, which is unfortunate. Lots of people were video-ing the skits but once the french started their skit everyone figured it wasn't worth wasting the battery power on it so people turned off the cameras. What a shame. So once again my internet is being a pain in the ass and I can't upload the video that we did on Canada, which was actually quite hilarious. I will have to look into it again later.

We had a physical competition between all the tzevets which was a lot of fun. We didn't know what we had to do, but there were multiple sections to the competition. The first thing we had to do was run about 400 meters with someone on the stretcher. The next part of the competition was that we had to crawl about 30 meters, and between the tzevet finish a 10 liter jerry can of water (there were 8 of us in the tzevet) then we had to eat 3 cans of loof. To remind you, loof is one of the menu items on the battle rations. One of my cousins brings the loof back to his mother who then feeds it to the stray cats. The stuff tastes like shit - think kosher spam. So in the attempt to stomach the loof after drinking far too much water far too fast, I found out that tasting loof can self induce vomiting. The instant the loof touched my tongue everything came back up. Eating loof can be a good alternative to sticking your fingers down your throat. I did manage to stomach some of the loof, but note easily. Leg 3 was to carry 4 tzevet members about 100 meters using 3 people, where one person grabs the legs, and the other two each grab and arm. To finish it all off, leg 4 was an endurance competiton of who can hold themselves up in the bridge position (forearms and toes are the only things on the ground) for the longest. Most people dropped out in the 5-7 minute range, but the competition ended after 15 minutes where a few people were still hanging in there, with one guy, Chris practically lying in his own vomit. Quite the intense competition. The commanders were watching and laughing while the majority of people were puking up all that water and loof we had drank throughout the competition. Minus the loof and too much water, the competition was fun and everyone enjoyed the healthy competition - pardon the pun.

We had another competition between the tzevets on what we had learnt in our Zionism classes. We had to run from place to place around the base and answer questions. I figured this would be a piece of cake, and that hands down I would take the competition. At every station a different mefakedet was waiting to give us the question - or at least they were supposed to be. In short, two instances we got to where the mefakedet was supposed to be before her. This led us to running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to find her. This led us not only into the dining room, but into the actual kitchen where we got evil eyed by the sweet old lunch ladies. Also, the same mefakedet caused me to nearly flip out on her because she told me my answer was wrong when I knew it was 100% right and then spent the next 10 minutes trying to think of the correct answer - the exact answer I gave the first time. All this bullshit led my tzevet to lose the challenge by a minute as opposed to crushing everyone by 10 minutes. Unlike the prize for the physical competion, which was junk food - not something good to eat after puking your guts out, this prize was a surprise privaledge. So I was very pissed off to find out that we lost. We disputed the fact that we should have won, so in the end they said both of our teams won. So now we have to wait until next week to find out what we won, but hopefully its something good.

We gave back all our stuff that they had given us - our bet uniform (the stuff you wear on base and get dirty), vest, dissease infested blankets (scabias) and our canteens. It was very liberating to walk around without a canteen considering it was the second most important thing we had in our possessions - next to the gun.

I'm really excited that the course is almost over and I can finally go to my combat unit. I'm pretty sure I get off from the army on Wednesday so I get some days off beforehand. Another thing everyone has been looking forward to is breaking distance. That means that we actually get to speak to our commanders like real people. For 3 months we have to call them by their rank, and we don't know anything about them. On occasion we dig up information like 'I saw so and so on a bus heading home' or 'I saw their name written on their backpack', etc. So at the end of the course they actually introduce themselves and we get to meet the people behind the job. Its sad that the course is over and now everyone is going to their own units. I only know one other person who is also going to tanks, so its going to be a fresh start. It's going to be good to get away from all the morons on the base, but I am nearly 100% positive they will be replaced by other morons.