There was a girl at the bakum, before we even put away our bags, who began arguing with a man who had a falafel on his shoulder. They were arguing about her job, because she was upset she hadn’t gotten magav. The falafel man was telling her that jobs were decided way before the bakum – there was nothing for her to do now. I was in shock at her chutzpah, to so openly oppose a high ranking officer before she even put her bag down. But this is Israel.

I lost my new water bottle in the bakum. When I asked a soldier at the end of the sharsheret, while waiting for my bus to be called, if I could get it, he asked: “Is it critical?” I shook my head and answered, “No chance?” He shook his head, “No chance.”

I got pricked and shot and X-rayed and photographed and interviewed and swabbed and confused.

Then on a bus, I drove down to a base of tents.

There are a lot of small things I hadn’t put much thought into prior to my two and half days in the army. Such as: how bad shoe polish smells; how to properly secure your pants with rubber bands; how to correctly fold a hat; how to shave said hat so that it isn’t as fuzzy and therefore as overtly green, in both senses of the word; the immediacy of needing to get a uniform tailored, so that it can fit and reduce your greenness, without taking away from its deep olive hue.

Shower review: Rating 6/10. The pressure was certainly present, yet perhaps its presence was too present. It felt like I was being pelted with an automatic water gun. The temperature wavered between boiling and freezing, though a warm balance was easily attainable. Single stall. Curtain. Benches and hooks outside. Preferably not a daily venture.

I ate a lot of yogurt this week. Some vegetables, too.

I played a game of follow the leader, mixed with הרצל אמר, then when I got home, I learned the rhyme: אבן, נייר, ומספריים, אם נצח בין השתים.