Usually this feeling is brought on by blasting an emotionally loaded soundtrack through a decrepit car stereo while driving down a scenic two lane highway, on a sunny day, with the people you define as your best friends, on your way to nowhere in particular, or somewhere unimportant. However, it turns out that this feeling can also result from putting on full combat gear, patrolling a palestinian neighborhood, getting filmed by a foreign press crew, and trying to remember what steps in my life led me to become a possible segment on the evening news in some foreign country i may never visit.
as i write this i have exactly 10 minutes left before i have to get back in uniform and head back to the army so ill make it quick. no, i wasn't in gaza for the past two weeks, but thanks for everyone's concern, i got a lot of worried emails and facebook messages. i was mostly in the west bank, taking over for soldiers that got sent to gaza. i spent the weekend patrolling a hamas dominated neighborhood in hebron near where the settlers who got kicked out of that big house last month went on a rampage. i saw the house and the graffiti the settlers painted all over the place, it made me sad/angry. while we were on patrol i think my officer got bored (we patrolled for 10 1/2 hours straight) so we started climbing through backyards, going up to rooftops and having impromptu stakeouts. we also did random car searches, which is when this guy and some blonde chick who was either a producer or a reporter started filming us. it felt surreal. the reason for the vigilance was a fear of increased violence because of the operation in gaza, but it turned out to be a mostly quiet weekend, with the noted exception of someone shooting at one of the jeep patrols a couple of kilometers from us.
ok i really have to run now, i didnt get to write everything i wanted, maybe next week.
i still have a few weeks of training left. i start jump school in a week, so keep your fingers crossed for my parachute opening. and dont worry, i wont be in gaza in the near future, so thats one news segment you wont have to worry about.
