Yom HaMe'ah

The time was 5:30pm. The date? October 15th, 2012. After a sleepless night and a stomachache that would've rendered even the most determined woman incapacitated, I had finally fallen asleep. It was a sleep that would not last long.

5:35pm - a knock on the door. I awoke with a start. As one of my roommates entered my room, I mentally prepared a stern lecture about respecting each other's personal space. Then I saw her panicked look. She asked if I was packed. When my face betrayed the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about, her jaw dropped. "They didn't tell you?" she asked. I shook my head. And then she delivered the news. "Yom HaMe'ah," she stammered. "It's tomorrow." She explained that our group's social worker had succeeded in pushing forward our Yom HaMe'ah to make sure that we would not be excluded from the jobs that draft in November. Unfortunately, this also meant an inadequate amount of freak-out time. Half an hour later, I found myself sitting on a bus to Haifa, trying in vain to ignore the butterflies that were furiously attacking my stomach. And thus - with a slight over-dramatization - began Yom HaMe'ah.

In case you don't remember, Yom HaMe'ah is a day when Israeli girls go to a bland office building in Haifa and for eight hours, travel from station to station. Each station is specially designed to test a certain skill. They have eight hours to try to show the army that they deserve a job that doesn't include guarding ketchup or pressing the same button on a keyboard all day long. Being an Israeli girl (which I will never get used to saying), I, too, arrived at 8am and waited for directions. They split us into groups and had us introduce ourselves. Don't be fooled: the smiling girls in your group are not there to help you. They are also there to prove themselves at each of the stations, and they will do anything necessary - anything - to stand out. I don't even know how to describe the intense feeling of competition that pervaded the air. In my last post, I likened Yom HaMe'ah to The Hunger Games, which was unnervingly accurate. However, there was also definitely an element of Mean Girls at play. Think Hungry Girls, and there you have Yom HaMe'ah.

The first station was one that tested how we lead and teach a class. Each member of my group got a topic and eight minutes to read a double-sided piece of paper. The paper outlined the information we would need for a four-minute presentation to follow. As the Israeli girls in my group breezed through their readings, I stumbled through mine, coming face to face with scientific phrases and psychological blabber that I hardly would've understood had it been in English. Luckily, the words I did understand provided me with enough context to give a decent (I hope) presentation, but I couldn't help feeling like it was infinitely harder for me than it was for the rest of my group, like they had an unfair advantage just by virtue of being born in this country.

The rest of the stations passed by without getting any easier. I won't give you the grueling details, but suffice it to say that I was mentally exhausted and ready to give up after the first few hours. Of course, I know this is what I came here to do, and so I carried on, but my obvious disadvantage kept me stressed. I wish I could say that today was a success, but the truth is that I have no idea. In a week or so, I'll be receiving my Manila with a list of possible jobs for me dictated by today's performance. I think I'll only be able to decide how successful I was when my Manila comes and guarding ketchup isn't listed as one of my jobs.

On the upside, here are some new pictures of my cats. :)