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| My sweet action movie picture |
So it's been an exciting week. I had the opportunity to go volunteer on an army base from Sunday to Thursday at a place called Rosh Ha-Niqra and it was a really cool experience and a nice break from volunteering at the school in Ashdod. I went with a bunch of people from my program (15 of us in total) and we slept in barracks, kind of reminiscient of my days as a camper at Elphinstone, with bunk beds and a common area we shared for lots of card games. The food was surprisingly good and all of the soldiers at the base were very nice and friendly. The two soldiers that were in charge of our program for the week, Bar and Ruthie, were especially kind and went above and beyond their duties to make us comfortable and even went to another base in order to make us diskiot, which are equivelent to American or Canadian dog tags for the army. I now have my own dog tag with my name inscribed in Hebrew and it's pretty cool.
As far as the actual volunteering went, it was hard manual labour but I was grateful we were doing something that was helpful for the army and not just busy work. We were responsible for moving sand bags and filling up boxes as protection at an outpost on the Lebanese border. The boxes sit all along the very outside of the outpost and provide shelter for soldiers who are surveying the border from behind them. We transported over 1000 sandbags over the course of three days, each one weighing in at 40 lbs. My arms, pecs, and back were all pretty sore by Thursday but there was a great sense of accomplishment in the task we had completed. On Wednesday, we took the last half of the day to go on an excursion as well and it was one of the highlights of the week. Our chaperones took us to the spot where Israeli soldiers were captured by the Hezballah in 2006 and where a small shrine has been set up in their honour. A superior combat officer told us the story of the attack and their abduction, and how they had been caught off guard because they were heading home the next day and had lowered their alert level. The Hezballah hid in the mountain and used a strategy unfamiliar to the IDF by coming out of holes they had dug in the mountain. Their communications office across the border had all of the soldiers' phones bugged and so they had discovered the soldiers were about to head home and would probably be surprised by an attack. They attacked hard and killed over 10 Israeli soldiers, and so caused the start of the Lebanon war. Within 24 hours, a full war was raging and many Northern Israeli settlements had gone completely underground. It was quite an amazing story to hear firsthand from the officer and I have to admit I was a little uneasy hearing it at that spot, as he told us that Hezballah were probably in the mountains adjacent to us at that very moment, and we all had to take the batteries out of our phones in order to remain untracked.
All in all, it was a very interesting and unique experience this week, and a nice change of pace from the somewhat predictable life in Ashdod I have grown accustomed to. In other news, I have officially booked my flight to Thailand along with two others from my program and right now, there is a huge storm brewing outside that could last for days. That's all for now but hope you're all happy and healthy back home and as always, don't forget to check in!
Ciao for now,
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