Release date

My year and a half of service is quickly coming to a close (Feb 19/2011). Less than 2 months away! What to do afterward??? The release date is towards the end of the training and the most intersting exercizes are to be conducted after my release date - those are the exercizes of the company and batallion levels. I recently asked my company commander what the situation is with my release. He was quick to respond not to worry (apparently, when translated to english, the statement 'dont worry' actually causes the opposite effect! - I'm not sure if thats an army thing or a Hebrew thing). In any case he said don't worry I will get my accumulated vacation days. So where did my vacation days come from, and how many do I have, and why have I decided to save them up? To answer the questions out of order - I have a lot of vacation days and I was forced to save them up. Each soldier gets a certain amount of vacation days a year. If one is a jobnik - comes from the english word job implying that the soldier has a regular day job from 9-5 or something of that matter he can request time of like you would at a regular job. For a combat soldier, its difficult enough getting off our scheduled weekend! Forget about unscheduled personal vacations! So without the option of taking vacation days they get saved up and in essence the vacation is all piled up at the end of my service. With my entitled vacation time practically I would stop working well ebfore the 19th of february, thus I would miss even more of training.

In response to what my company commander told me I was quick to respond that I want to stay on until the end of the training. Needless to say, but he was more than surprised and said it shouldn't be a problem. After taking a look at the schedule for the training I have decided to continue 'working' up until the end of the last training exercize which is of the battalion level. After that, I will get my vacation and then get released on the 10th of April - another month and a half after my original release date - and I will have a bit longer than one month of vacation time - which will start in the month of March.

So why specifically have I decided to sign this extra month? There are several reasons, however the main reason is that I expect the training to be fun - why would I decide not to participate in something that I expect to enjoy? On top of that how often does someone get to participate in a battalion level tank training exercize - 35 tanks! I'd be a fool to pass it up!