I've been accepted into the Windmill-Building Unit

Well, I’m done with that! It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought, in terms of not being able to understand things. There was one fantastic test we had to do as a group though where not understanding was kind of crucial:

Instructor: “Okay, as a group you’re all going to build a BARF using straws and pins.”

Here I waited to see if something she said would give me a clue as the to the meaning of the word I didn’t understand, represented in this story by the word BARF.

Instructor: “After that, each group is going to name their BARF and then advertise their BARF.”

Well…fuck. This was early in the day, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking my teammates just what on earth we were supposed to be building. I listened carefully for clues, but here’s pretty much a summary of the conversation that happened for the following five minutes: “Let’s make our BARF out of squares on top of each other.” “Great, but how will that look like a BARF?” “What do you mean, it won’t look like a BARF? Do people normally build BARFs out of straws???”

Finally the only boy in the group grabbed a piece of paper and said, “No, if we take the straws we can make the BARF like this.”

And he drew a rocket ship. So five minutes into a ten minute exercise, I figured out the word for what we were supposed to be building.

After the exercise we had a couple minutes to kill, so we started chatting as a group. The instructor said, “Does anyone have anything interesting to share from the exercise or in general?” And so I said, “Yes. I learned the word rocket ship five minutes ago.” And everyone cracked up….


After this we had to do a computer test in Hebrew. Which I didn’t think was all that bad. A lot of the Israelis were moaning about how horrible is was in terms of length and confusing-ness….but I didn’t think it was all too terrible. It had some confusing parts, and there were a couple graphs I had to analyze that I didn’t understand (they used acronyms I didn’t know…so I could answer the questions on them because the answers also used the acronyms, but I had no idea what is the graph was describing)….there was also a part where I had to click a button if I saw a blue square and a different button if I saw no blue square…and the blue square was hidden among red squares and blue circles, so it was kind of a like a visual mindfuck. Good news for me? I learned the word for square YESTERDAY….

Next we had to talk to the group about a topic of our choice for three minutes. I talked about my hobby of people-watching….and it was excruciating. I felt like I couldn’t find the words for anything. The instructor asked me to tell about a specific person I saw, and so I started on a story, but then realized that I didn’t know any of the words in Hebrew. A couple kids in the group called out, “Oh, let her tell it in English!” So I was allowed to tell the story in English. I ended up telling the story of the pink packing peanuts man with his log of bubble wrap, which cracked up the instructor and some of the kids. Finally I sat down and one of the girls that wasn’t laughing turns to me and says, “I did not understand a single word you just said.”

We eventually had to do another exercise of speaking in front of people, but this one was based on texts we had to read. It was challenging just because I didn’t have as much time to prepare as the other kids (just cos I can’t read as fast….yet), but I think I did okay considering the whole language barrier.

Next we had to build windmills according to a picture. (A crucial army skill right there—from what I hear, you’re CONSTANTLY building windmills in the army). I actually felt really proud of this one, because in all the other activities the other folks had an advantage over me because of language (even the other two immigrants in the group were already fluent because they’ve been here longer), but here everyone was on equal footing. When we got out of that activity, one of the girls in my group was telling anyone who would listen that I built the best windmill out of the group. Hahah….so I guess that’s good news.

Towards the end we had to do an exercise in what you might describe as “customer service.” Basically we had to sit in front of an interviewer who would act as a dissatisfied customer or student or whatever. Before we started this exercise, one of the Israeli girls in the lobby was talking about how frustrated she got with this exercise. She said when it was her turn she had to be a receptionist at a hotel and a dissatisfied guest was threatening to leave. “She says, ‘I want to leave!’ THEN LEAVE!”

In any case, I hope I did well on that part. Not that I want to be on the end of some army customer service hotline, but just because I think I’d be a bad American if I sucked at this. When I think of Israel, I think of a customer yelling at store employee and the store employee yelling back in an even more aggressive way. When I think of the US, I think of a customer yelling at a store employee and the employee saying very calmly, “Ma’am, I’m sorry you feel that way, but unfortunately that’s the store policy….Ma’am--….Ma’am--…please stop throwing stuff at me, Ma’am, I’m trying to help.”

All in all, I had an interesting and pleasant time. The people in my group were very nice and extremely protective of me, constantly making sure that I understood.

So that, my friends, is what I did today.