I had my "first order" at the army last week! It was a loonngg day of testing, and I'm glad to finally have this step behind me. I arrived at the recruitment office at 8:30am and left at 2:30pm-ish. The first thing I had to do was sort of an interview, the girl asked me about my parents and family, when/where I was in school, what I studied, where I worked, etc. After she filled in all my information including names/addresses/phone numbers of basically every person I know in Israel, she gave me the hardest Hebrew test ever. Apparently the test is standardized and everyone gets the same one, and yea, that means Israeli's too. After telling her that I didn't know any of the words int he first three sentences she gave me it got a little easier and I could do some of the things she was asking of me. The girl was really nice and told me that I was doing really well, apparently I wasn't really supposed to be able to do it because it is intended to be hard for Israeli's. Anyway, we went on to talk more in depth about my family, what I want to do in the future, what I am expecting in the army, why I made Aliyah/decided to join the army, etc. I did all of this in Hebrew fairly easily, pretty cool.
I went to the medical exam floor after the interview, which was pretty standard. Urine test, quick physical exam, height, weight, and I have an optometrist apt. on Monday to send them my glasses prescription since I didn't know the numbers really, and certainly not in the measurements here. I sat around a bit longer (see future post on the situation that occurred with a little religious boy while I was waiting) and then took the psychotechni test on the computer. I thought this test was pretty easy, two parts where I identified shapes, patterns, and relationships between shapes. Everything was in pictures which is right up my alley, I love those kinds of things. After I finished everything I finally got a sandwich and headed up to see my buddy Amos who has been helping me through my process.
Amos looked at my profile and told me that I was really smart, so apparently I did well on the psychotechni test, although I don't know what my score was and don't know what it is out of. He said "100 and 100" but that could be out of 500 for all I know, haha. Or it could be out of 100. Either way, his buddy tried to put me down because I'm almost 23 and everyone else taking these tests is 18. This is something I'll have to get used to...the age difference. Oh well, what can you do, I don't think I learned intelligence or how to identify shapes in college, but maybe. In the end I don't think I did well enough on the Hebrew test to be exempt from the army ulpan (hebrew course) which is a huge bummer. I really don't want to spend more time in ulpan before starting the army, maybe I'll only have to do 3 weeks, but I'd rather just get thrown in there and not waste any more time, I'll pick up the Hebrew eventually!
After my day of testing I went up to Shorashim to the Morse's ("adopted" family) for Shavuot, the holiday that was this week. Great food holiday, especially for a used-to-be veggie since it's all dairy meals! We had our meal Tuesday night outside with everyone from the community (Shorashim is a moshav, like a small community, not as socialist as a Kibbutz) eating together. The desserts are amazing because they can be milk/cheese based, unlike when you eat a meat meal and (for kosher reasons) desserts are "parve," which means has no milk or meat. yummm cheesecakee! Wednesday we had a yummy poached salmon with blintzes and yummy salads and cheeses. And homemade cheesecakes. Allie and I came back to Jerusalem Thursday and spent the day around town. We met up with friends at night and she left for Beer Sheva Friday morning. It's my last weekend in Jerusalem! Leaving for Allie's in the north on Wednesday. Summer on the beach, yes please! Currently my plan is to be in Nahariya with Allie until she goes to the states in August. I will then move to Shorashim with the Morse's until Allie comes back from the states in November. Hopefully then we'll move to an apartment in Jerusalem with a few other friends. Also, hopefully I'll be in the army at some point this summer, and throughout these moves.
My enlistment date should be coming in the mail, along with my job options. I'll have to work whatever connections I can in order to actually get a decent job, though.
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