Sar El II

The second week of Sar El was much different from the first. It rained a lot all week so we didn't go to the outpost too much. We mostly worked in the kitchen. Washing dishes and cutting thousands of tomatoes and cucmbers isn't too exciting but since we were all there doing it together, the time passed pretty quickly.

The third week was back to beautiful weather, so back to the outpost. We finished with the sand and rocks, and then put up camoflouge nets and these like reflective screens. After the week inside it was really nice to see and feel the sun again.  And after the week in the kitchen together we were also much closer as a group.

One other, kind of important,  thing about Sar El was the evening activities. Everyone night we did somthing. Either it was just for fun to get to know each other and play around or it was informative, like about history or about the IDF, or it was about "issues" relevant to Israel now, like Gilad Shalit or the image of Israel in the media. Most nights it was pretty interesting, especially because everyone in our group came from such different backgrounds that people had ideas that you had never heard of, or thought of, before. The last night we finished up with a Purim party and scavenger hunt. By then everyone was comfortable being stupid/silly so it was a lot of fun.

Overall, it was a good experience. Met cool people, did some different stuff, saw more of Israel.

Sar El I

After two weeks of nothing but relaxing and taking it easy, last week I started Sar-El. It's a volunteer program where you go and do some work for the army for 1,2 or 3 weeks. We have uniforms and stay at the base we are working on during the week.  Because we are staying on the base and working with regular soldiers, you also get a feeling for army life, that might be more realistic than Gadna (the week of the army we did during the ulpan).

There's all different kinds of jobs/projects that Sar-El groups do, but our group is young (17-45 yrs old), so we have a lot of physical work. Its a little bit hard to explain what we are doing but basically, we are filling these blocks with sand and using sand bags to make one of the outposts safer (hopefully) for the soldiers working in the bunkers and trenches there.  It feels good to doing some physical work and be outside. This project is also nice because we can see the soldiers we are helping and we can see the progress we make every day, as opposed to Sar-El  groups that are counting bullets or repacking medical kits. My group itself is pretty interesting too. There's 14 of us from all over the world. South Africa, Holland, Germany, Holland, England, Australia, Scotland, and 5 from the US.

By the end of the first week we were all starting to losen up and getting friendlier and getting into the routine of working together, so I'm looking forward to week 2.