tranquility rulez, ok

now to try and remember what the hell happened.

wednesday morning was alright - i really wasn't very productive. unfortunately, our team leader noticed this, and gave us all a Very Boring (and Long) Speech about not doing it again.

whatever.

after j-girl "deciding" on tuesday not to continue, things went back to the way they were two days prior. so although i appreciated the physical (not extreme, chill) intimacy, it was a tad confusing.

i got all sorts of missioning-type things done - including getting final authorization to leave the country! w00t!

guard-duty was all good. i knew the guard commander from before, and the group was good, so it was all very relaxed. we spent the evening playing "durak", and for my second time playing i did alright. the japanese expression for the week is "watashi no me!", which means "my eye!" - randomly shouting it while cupping an eye is most amusing. i tried to get some sleep before my shift - finally passed out around 9pm, was woken rudely for a "jump" around 22.15: the commander couldn't understand why i was so abrupt after i'd finally gotten some quality sleep...

i didn't really sleep well before the shift - 2 to 6am, but the shift was great. the second-in-command joined us for a lot of it, just because we didn't stop talking for four hours. it was the most interesting guard-shift discussion i've had to date. at some point my team-leader's ex rocked up, and provided me with a yoyo. aside from keeping me awake, there's something strangely entertaining about standing at an army gate with an uzi, "walking the dog".

i got an hour's sleep after the shift, then began some serious rounds of coffee and breakfast. j-girl joined in a bit later, and she informed me that the reason she's not interested is because i'm too nice.

fuck off.

in fact, the more i think about it, the less i want anything to do with her (relationship-wise), because the main thing that i was attracted to was the sense that she wouldn't want to play games. i can't be arsed to suffer another high-school girlfriend.

the mongoose was good enough to replace me on alert, and i hurried home, showered, packed, took the bus to the train station, and got to work EXACTLY as the guys from there were leaving to the circumcision.

circumcisions are never great. there's something very defining about it as a jew:
a) hurt the child in an extremely personal manner, then give him some wine
b) make both parents completely neurotic
c) test the mettle of all the friends and family
d) say thank you to the guy who's caused all the trouble

only one girl fainted during the proceedings. the mohel (dude what surgerizes, like), i gather from sammy's reaction, wasn't most efficient, or didn't use the sharpest knife in the drawer.

but i stood there thinking of daddy sammy, watching his first-born son entering the world as a jew, after converting for love. sammy: you're a king. and you score points for suffering all the speeches, too ;)

i travelled up north with one of sammy's friends, who proved to be great company. although we were caused considerable stress by the bus being 45 minutes late, things were fine.
oh, yeah: and waking up surrounded by people speaking loudly in arabic, and then registering that the bus is driving through the middle of an enormous arab town, is not comforting. especially when in uniform. instant paranoia, baby!

got to the kibbutz - talk about a breath of fresh air - just in time for a superb dinner of hot curry and coconut chicken bits in rice. we all talked quite a lot, and then i totally crashed. slept beautifully, until around 8am, and i'm now planning on nothing until i leave around 1pm to return to ra'anana.

man, it's SO pretty here!