The Gadna Experience

It's finally here! 

2/24

Today is our first full day at Gadna. We woke up 6:00 and did our morning chores. My group packed up the bus with everything we would need for the Field, then we got going. We learned how to camouflage ourselves by rubbing our faces in mud (literally). Then we changed our shadows. One group made a giraffe, the other group (my group) made an elephant. It was a little strange in some parts but we had the right idea!) Then we got to cover ourselves in branches and grass. That's always fun. And we ran from fake bombs (aka a rock). That's where they give you 3 seconds to run as fast as you can to get as far away as possible and dive to the ground. Then we joined with the rest of our groups and had a joined lesson on shelter...and of course, had a competition who could build the best one in 15 minutes.

Later we discussed the existence of Israel and the Jewish obligation/ responsibility to protect it. 

Walked (and crawled) back 3 miles to the base and learned about Bengorion then stopped by the grave site. As we were walking through the little park to get to the view and the graves, people were taking pictures of us. As our samelet was talking to us later, she explained that they don't know how old we are or where we were from, all they knew was that we were wearing uniforms so to them we were soldiers. 

When we finally got back to the base, I know I was exhausted! But the day wasn't over yet. We had dinner then off to our first gun lesson. I'd say that the day was better than yesterday, maybe because we are a little more used to it now and also we did more interesting things which made it more fun.

2/25

Today was our second day in Gadna. Wake up was at 6:00, then it was immediately off to morning exercise and stretch. The rest of our morning looked a little something like this: Run. Line. Chet. Run. Line. Run. Chet. Run. Line. I think you get the idea.

What seemed like ears later, we finally got to have breakfast. After that we had some more gun lessons to prep us for the shooting range which would be tomorrow. We had to learn all the parts of the gun and also all the commands that told us what to do…in Hebrew.

Two of our groups got to clean the dining hall during lunch, and two others during dinner. Lucky for us, my group got lunch. That meant that we went before everyone else and ate first. Then while the rest of the base was eating, we served them, cleaned the tables, collected their dishes and washed them. And that was all before they were even done eating! Once the dining hall was empty, we got to work. Our commanders had already told us that the group the week before us had taken 3 hours, at least which gave us a goal. In total, it took us 2 hours and 50 minutes to serve everyone, clean all the dishes, clean all the tables, and squeegee the floor dry, not once, but twice.

After we finally finished cleaning, we went right back into some more gun lessons and did those for the remainder of the day (with no lack of running and chets of course).

2/26

Its hard to believe that we’ve been here for a month now. That’s already a quarter of this trip gone by, yikes.

And to celebrate that, we get to shoot today! (okay so that has nothing to do with it but we can pretend right? Right) The one remaining group that didn’t have to clean yesterday got up super early to go to the range to set up everything for us all while we finished lessons that we didn’t finish yesterday then after lunch the rest of us went to the range. Us lefty’s got to shoot first which was cool but also a little scary since we wanted to make sure to do everything right. We each got 10 shots which isn’t a lot but it was still sooo much fun!

2/27

Summary of my week in Gadna:

This week was probably one of the worst, most tiring, absolutely exhausting, and still one of the most amazing and fun experiences of my life. The entire week I never thought I would be sad leaving but I definitely was. In a way it feels like the end of our whole trip but then I think about it and I’m still here for 3 more months!

In our last half hour or so, we sat in a circle with our commander and she took off her hat and actually allowed herself to smile and laugh in front of us (the rest of the week, every time she laughed, she would have to turn around and compose herself before coming back to us). She had written us all a little goodbye note and it was so cute! (Especially because a lot of the words were spelt wrong.)

Memorable points of the week:

Playing the pen game to make sure all of us were awake and paying attention (our commander would randomly drop a pen in the middle of us during a lesson and we would all have to jump onto the benched we were sitting on as fast as we could) and she knocked the pen out of her pocket by accident and we all jumped up onto the benches and she started laughing and had to walk away.

When a kid asked if he could wear his hat backwards and our commander asked if he was Ash from Pokémon.