I'm going to have a neon green fucking beret!

Yeah. I'm going to have a neon green beret. You know what that means? Nachal.

No, I haven't had my army interview or whatever yet, but the program I'm doing is such that you can ONLY go into Nachal. So the guy in charge told me, "Samantha, you're going to be in Nachal! Are you excited??" And, well, to be honest I don't know a fucking thing about the Israeli army so i don't know if I'm supposed to be excited or not. I'm wikipedia-ing Nachal and I'm still not sure I understand. I don't understand the US Military, so this whole learnign about a military in Hebrew is going to be a fucking bitch. Even when the people there spoke in English, it was like "brigade this" or "company that" or "unit whonanny" and "platoon doobie" and I couldn't keep track of it all. Fuck, I'm goign to be the worst soldier ever.

So today I had to sit for five hours to learn about Nachal and the army in general. Holy fuck.

So I learned that most of the boys in the program go into combat, while the girls will probably end up being instructors of some sort. So I guess that's what I'll be doing for my army service.

I was told that next week I'll get to go to the army induction center place, and then a couple days later I'll know where I'll be put (tentatively), and then a week or so after that I'll get finalization and whatnot.

Holy holy fuck. Holy fuck. It was terrifying because they kept referring to Nachal as "YOUR Brigade." Holy fuck. I have a brigade??? I HAVE A BRIGADE!!!

On the way back from Tel Aviv, I kept seeing Nachal soldiers (on the bus, in the bus station, etc) and I was like, "HOLY FUCK I'M GOING TO BE ONE OF THOSE!"



The most scary part of all of this is telling my parents. I was telling my mom today on the phone that I went to Tel Aviv, and I hinted that I talked to "some people from a Jewish organization" (some soldiers from the IDF are people from a Jewish organization, right?) about some "potential programs" I could do in Israel. I really wanted to tell her about how my army plans were becoming more firmed up because it is both exciting and scary, so I casually said, "So you're still against the army idea?" And my mother flipped out and said that OF COURSE she still doesn't want me to join the army. So......fuck........I'm not sure how or when I'm going to tell her and my dad. It's just really difficult because it's terrifying to feel so absolutely alone. I have to figure out how a foreign army works, and I have to find a place to live, and etc etc.....


SEND ME LOVE!

(or chocolate.)