Believe it or not, it actually wasn’t that bad. I got incredibly lucky in a number of different ways:

• Instead of doing level 02 basic training like I was supposed to do, I got sent to level 01, which is considerably easier. I have no idea why (it wasn’t just me – my entire company was also supposed to do 02), but I wasn’t exactly asking too many questions.
• I did my basic training in Mahaneh 80 (“Camp 80″) which is up in the north, near Caesarea. Because it’s near the coast, it’s actually much warmer than Jerusalem (meaning, it’s very pleasant in December). More significantly, it’s not the Zikkim base, which has been under rocket fire for years – especially this last week, as you can probably imagine.
• All the girls in my platoon were nice. Being stuck together with bitchy girls can really make boot camp suck, but I got along with everyone there. Not only that, girls kept talking about how nice I was, which is pretty much a first. I kept telling them, “I’m bitchy in English! Really!”

I expected to have more problems than I did, whether in accepting military authority or in falling asleep at night in a room shared with five other girls, or with the Hebrew. But to my surprise, I slept like a log, and was repeatedly informed that my ugly, obnoxious American accent is actually cool (no accounting for taste, I guess).

And as for the military authority – I found that it’s actually quite easy to show respect to one’s superiors if one, well, respects them. Take my sergeant, for example, who never smiled but was secretly incredibly nice, not to mention very professional. Or my platoon commander, who’s aggressively, scarily and extremely competent. I want to be her when I grow up – and she’s only about two years older than I am.

I can’t quite say that I enjoyed it – six hours of sleep a night, with what seemed like at least as much time spent standing at attention during the day is not all that fun – but I’ll really miss the people there. Commanding officers included.

* * *

And in another instance of what may or may not have been luck, I didn’t get sent down south to help on the Gaza border. At least two platoons from our base were sent, more or less at random – one of girls exactly like us, whose company was on base the Saturday the war started, and the other from the company in the dorms right across from ours (which at least meant less boys watching us undress through the windows).

I actually wanted to get sent – still do – because I hate feeling useless, especially when I feel that I should be doing something. It’s a little scary down there, yes, but civilians are living under these conditions – some of them for years. Not to mention what the people in Gaza themselves are going through now. I’m a soldier – shouldn’t I be helping already?

Even though we were in the north, the war wasn’t that far off. There were at least three instances of attempted kidnappings right outside the base this last week – one involving a girl from my own company. You can all probably imagine that we’re been going around with our little army-issue bottles of tear gas in our jacket pockets, rather than at the bottom of our bags like we did the first weekend off base.

(This post was originally meant to reassure you, believe it or not…)

I’m reporting to army HQ in Tel Aviv tomorrow morning. My course is (according to rumor) supposed to start a week from then, on a completely different base, so I guess the plan is to have me serve coffee or something until then. Here’s hoping they don’t screw up and stick me doing that for my entire service… I can think of better ways to spend two years.