Second week of Sarel

1-9-2011: Sunday morning, we met at the El-Al Junction to head back to the base to continue our volunteering venture. The volunteers and myself were a bit disappointed in our madrichot being a half hour late to our meeting point to head back to base, after getting packed lunch because of our tardiness, picking up a clean work uniform from the supply center, we continued work in the warehouse. In the warehouse, we worked on our sewing and folding skills with the tedious task of taking camouflage nets that are used to cover tents, checking for holes, sewing up holes and then folding them up again. After just a couple of hours of work, we went to dinner and then had an evening activity. Our evening activity was really interesting and I learnt a lot, the activity was a game of guessing places in Israel based on a fact about them, and then placing a card with the city's name on it's actual location on the map of Israel. It was a really fun game and I got answers that I didn't realize I knew such as the city Netanya, means something like 'gift of g-d', I thought about it because the Hebrew word for gift is Matana and the root is similar to that of Netanya so I guessed it and got it right. I was very proud of myself it shows my hebrew is improving since I've been on base.

1-10-2011: Monday, I went to breakfast and work not feeling great but I worked wanyways, even through being nauseous and just not well, in the warehouse we continued the camouflage net work with the tedious sewing and folding. It was funny because the senior citizens were there in the morning and there are two old ladies who have a serious FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), when we work so they wouldn't let us do anything and always taking over the work we were doing. It was kind of annoying but at the same time really funny because we just seemed really lazy to the warehouse commander because the ladies wouldn't let us do anything. After painstakingly trying to do some work with the senior citizen obstacle, we headed to the classroom to meet the commander, he gave us a presentation about the Iranian missile crisis and the Arab countries surrounding Israel. He gave us shocking information that the Iranians were not only a threat to Israel but the missiles range could endanger countries as far as France, so it is quite frightening to think that just one country can but truly detrimental and extremely dangerous the world as we know it. After lunch I was still feeling sick so the madrichot sent me back to the room to rest. After the volunteers got back I had someone to talk to after a lonely wait in which I couldn't sleep, I crocheted a lot though. After dinner we had another evening activity, this one was a game where a person had to answer questions based on facts given to a group of people,and the person answering the questions has to guess based on the questions who the person is that they are answering as. It was really interesting and I learnt a lot from the facts and they were a lot of things I didn't know about the people. There were three people we guessed Golda Meir, Yitchak Rabin and Theodore Herzl, I was the person answering for the questions about Theodore Herzl and I couldn't guess it until someone mentioned his book Der Judenstaa or "The State of Israel" in English. It was a good evening activity and I've really been enjoying the evening activities the last week and a half they've really interesting and I've learnt a lot about Israel and its history, more than I knew before.

1-11-2011: Tuesday, in the midst of our volunteering we went on a day trip to various places. We went with about thirty soldiers in tow, which made our departure quite delayed because they weren't expected and also quite unorganized. We were meant to leave base at 8:30 AM but we didn't leave until about 9:45 AM, so after getting the soldiers' guns checked out and museum reservations organized for the added members to the group, we finally left base to our first location, Abu Gosh. In the city we visited a monastery where we met a monk, Olivier, who works for the I.D.F.'s education unit. He told us about the city's history with a population with Muslims, Jews and Christians all living harmoniously, he told us his story about his life in France, his time in the French army as well as his moving to Israel from his monastery in France, and quite a few anecdotes about his interactions with the I.D.F., I really enjoyed going to the monastery because it was something new to see compared to majority of our day trips on Bnei Akiva. After leaving Abu Gosh, a city not far from Jerusalem we went to Tel Aviv for an hour lunch break, where me and friends from my program that are volunteering with me went on a long trek for a cupcake shop off of Dizengoff St., I got a red velvet cupcake, it was definitely worth the trek. After lunch we continued our day trip with a visit to the Palmach museum in Tel Aviv. The Palmach was an underground military movement in Israel back around the time that Israel was established, they played a big role fighting in the War of Independence. The museum has a really good set up they organized the tour into 12 rooms that all have short films that follow a group of people (members of the Palmach) and go from the start of the group to the establishment of the I.D.F., with all of the obstacles that were in between and the problems that Israel dealt with in that time period. After a long day traveling around we went back to base, had dinner and a free night in which we did nothing and were bored out of our minds, I don't know what the soldiers there do all the time for 2-3 years, kudos to them. Sleep being completely inevitable, that's exactly what happened next, we had an early night.

1-12-2011: Wednesday, we had our last Sarel work day, although bittersweet we were are pretty thrilled to be finished with our volunteering commitments. We had the usual volunteering jobs, painting cardboard boxes with the certain colors and wooden tool boxes just with a new coat of paint, cleaning grease off of tools. Throughout the day, we were bugging our soldier friend in the warehouse about the cookies and treats he promised us all week, he kept joking how he said nothing like that or that he lied, but of course he kept his promise, after a long paint covered work day we had a lovely treat of cookies, chips and peach iced tea. After lots of goodbyes to our warehouse friends we went back to the rooms, we saw our soldier friend at the dorms, who said he was really going to miss us, because we were his only entertainment on the base for the last two weeks, because it's truly that boring on the base. It was really cool that we made friends with soldiers on the base it was really nice to meet some new people. After dinner, we had an evening activity about Gilad Shalit, if you don't know who he is, he is an Israeli soldier from the Armory unit who was kidnapped by Hamas in 2005, near the time of the Second Lebanon War, he has been held hostage in Gaza for what is now 5 years. He has become a largely debated issue in israel because of the double edged sword that he represents, firstly his parents have been petitioning for his return outside of the Prime Minister's home in Jerusalem, although it seems simple. The Prime Minister should just go ahead and agree to the demands of Hamas for the return of Gilad, but the price is very high, Hamas wants the release of 1000 prisoners being held by Israel for acts of terror. So although it would be ideal to reunite family and son, just getting him back and releases so many multiple offense terrorists back, could just spurt a large amount of terror back into Israel. So what does the Prime Minister do, does he let these terrorists go to possibly bring more terror attacks to Israel, but still leave an Israeli soldier in Gaza, in captivity, and how would he explain that to Gilad's family and if he frees the terrorists what does he tell the thousands of Israeli families affected by the terror attacks committed by this particular 1000 terrorists. I'm in the middle, I just think its such a double edged sword, what do you do about a situation like this, that would be satisfactory for everyone. After this heated evening activity about this issue, we returned to the rooms, yet another early night.

1-13-2011: Thursday, our last day on base, with a small sleep-in of a half-hour we went to breakfast and then went to flag raising. On Thursdays, flag raising is more special because the whole base comes to unlike the rest of the week. Guess who got chosen to raise the flag in front of a large number of Israeli soldiers, yeah me, it was more than a little embarrassing, I'm pretty sure I turned as red as my hair. But either way, it was quite an honor to raise the flag for the base. After flag raising, we returned our uniforms and sleeping bags, and then had our last activity with the madrichot. This activity was a farewell activity, the first part was to vote for people for various awards, kind of joke awards, example I won "The Night Bird" for the person who slept the least and stayed up latest and "The One Who Looked Best in an Army Uniform", I don't know about that, I think I looked a little weird, but I guess its popular opinion. After giving out the joke awards which were pretty dead on, not many surprises. The madrichot gave us gifts from Sarel, a t-shirt, pin, chocolate bar, certificate and contact list, it's a nice gift, and will help me remember the program a lot better. After the activity we went to the warehouse we worked at the whole time to say goodbye to our commander and soldier who worked with is all the time. Then after lunch, we headed towards the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, and we were done, now I'm ready for a nice Shabbat in Bet Oved with family.