here's the gist of it. i finished my pre basic training program on tuesday afternoon. It was a really great finale. we got woken up by screaming and banging at 5 in the morning and told we had 5 minutes to be in full uniform including vests and be down stairs. when we got downstairs there were 6 open stretchers waiting for us. we had to down a full bottle of water (bad sign...hah) and load up our 6 heaviest guys on the stretchers and off we went. we were told there was suspicious troop movements on the syrian border and we were getting sent to the lebanon border for guard duty... hah nice story. we did about a half hour trek with the stretchers, half an hour under a loaded stretcher feels like an eternity, so the thought of the hours im going to be spending under these stretchers in the coming days and months is pretty terrifying. we ended up at a beautiful lookout point on the base right as the sun was rising, we did a little battle cry while lifting the loaded stretchers above our heads and then our commanding officer gave us a final speech after which we "broke distance" meaning we were allowed to start calling our officers by their first names and didn't have to salute anymore. we had some final casual conversations with our officers about their lives and what their up to and then we all filed onto buses and got taken back to the induction center to get our unit assignments. it was an emotional farewell considering how little time we spent together, we had some really great guys in charge of us. i forgot to mention, on our last night, before the 5 am wake up exercise, we attacked 3 of our officers when they came into our room for an inspection, surrounded them, lifted them up in the air, and paraded them around, it was really funny.
Back to the induction center. We arrived in the late afternoon and immediately we were back to square one, with mean guys behind sunglasses talking to us very sternly. being back in the induction center was bitter sweet for me. i was anxious to find out where i was going to be placed in the army, but we were being housed in the same spot where i did the tryout for the paratroopers 3 months earlier and it felt like a slap in the face. we got divided up into tents, had some dinner, showered, went to sleep, and got a wake up call at 4 30 AM. After folding up all the beds, organizing the base and having breakfast we got taken to the same courtyard where my paratrooper's tryout started all that time ago and 3 or 4 hundred of us (all people from my base, but not necessarily from my program) got assigned these seemingly random numbers and we sat and waited for our numbers to be called. of course everyone started comparing numbers and before long we figured out that the numbers had something to do with what unit you were being sent to. At this point i noticed that i had the same number as all the people i knew who had done the paratroopers tryout and passed it, so i was very confused but i was trying not to get my hopes up. Eventually my number gets called, we all get up and now i see that for sure all the people who got into the paratroopers have my number, and their the only ones who have my number. i was starting to feel more excited but i was still trying not to get my hopes up. we got taken to the building that stores the uniforms, and sure enough my name was called, i came inside, handed over my 2 pairs of black boots and 2 shirts and was given 2 pairs of red boots and the special paratroopers shirts and belt. This is how i was "told" by the army that i was in the paratroopers. no one said "hey we made a mistake back in may, your in, or we changed our mind, your in" they just handed me the uniform and that was that. kind of poetic, but also nerve racking because the entire time i felt i was getting away with something and at any moment someone was going to realize the mistake and send me to two years of kitchen duty in butt fuck. Alas, that didn't happen...yet. Me and the rest of the guys from my base who made it to the paratroopers (about 20 of us) got taken to a waiting area where we filled out some forms with the assistance of a very attractive girl from the paratroopers. after that we were instructed on where we had to report to on sunday for basic training, how to get there, and then we got loaded onto a bus and got taken to the tel aviv central bus station where we were let off for a very long weekend (wed-sunday).
so there it is. In some inexplicable way everything worked out and i became a paratrooper. this is turning into quite the hollywood melodrama. Actually, I guess its more accurate to say im now on my way to becoming a paratrooper. Its going to be a long trek but ill keep you posted.
My new uniform
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