90%

My friend Amos who I met at the army recruitment center and who has been helping me with my enlistment process told me Thursday that there is a 90% chance I will enlist July 21st....Happy 23rd Birthday to me!!! If you're thinking, "Wow, that's soon!" so am I, but I am the one who asked for it to be ASAP. The enlistment date they gave me at first was December 2012, Amos moved it up to October 9th this year, and then, hopefully, to July 21st. I will call tomorrow to see if the date is finalized...let's cross our fingers!

That's less than two weeks away which means I need to get my act together and get things done since, once I'm in the army, I will only be home Friday afternoon-Sunday morning. First order of business, doctors appointment in the morning with Allie for the second step of our license conversion. I need to do things like change my address with the army to say that I'm living in the north and not Jerusalem (which means I'll be allotted 3 extra hours of travel time to and from base, woo hoo!). I also need to get "lone soldier" status on my file so that I receive all the benefits that come with that including extra pay, money for groceries, rent money, etc. A lone soldier is someone without family in Israel. I have to buy a few things like socks, flashlight, odds and ends that I'll need while in the army. I also need to figure out what i'm doing for my cellphone plan because I want the internet on my phone so I can use skype to keep in touch.A bit of catchup, nothing too exciting. I babysat in Jerusalem last Tuesday and Wednesday and spent Wednesday night/Thursday in Tel Aviv. Last Thursday night I spent the night at the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) with my friend Itamar and a bunch of his friends. Itamar's family owns some land on the shore of the Kinneret. I got to wake up to the sun rising behind the mountains in the picture above. I also had poike for my first time, see photo below. Poike is a "dish" that comes from Africa and is literally just a combination of whatever you have, cooked in a pot over a fire. We made two, one veggie one meat, and put in potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, I don't know what the meat was, rice, chickpeas, soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, coca cola, wine, beer, and probably some rocks and sand,too. I had the veggie one and it actually didn't taste bad I just wasn't too fond of the texture/color. I was told you have to eat poike in the dark, it's just "what you do" and also that poike without said isn't real poike. People make it in the army I guess relatively often so maybe I'll have another shot at it soon.
I'm planning some birthday/enlistment festivities next weekend and the night before I enlist which should be nice. I'll keep you updated on the army as soon as I know for sure!