from tragedy to success

thought for the week:
"what? you're stopping me for this shit? do you have any idea how much contraband i'm carrying?!"

the best moment of all the courses so far:
all the toilet stalls manned, and i read aloud one of the quotes. the guy in the stall next to me started giggling, and the rest of us got the giggles. we spent no less than five minutes all laughing raucously, getting more and more hysterical every time someone came in to use the urinals and got freaked out. best laugh i've had in years, and quite the bonding experience. and totally awkward.

worst item of the week:
one of my team got sent home, a herpes infection of the eye. that's pretty damn serious, poor bastard. i say poor bastard, i really do feel sorry for him, but at the same time we're all completely freaked out because we're all covered in minor injuries and we're terrified of infection. and aside from the usual unconscious touching of eyes and ears and so forth, this dude's a nose-picker [in other words, he's constantly doing things he's not aware of], making it all the worse.

i'm losing my voice due to all the green junk that i'm incubating in my lungs and throat. a dust allergy in the desert isn't cool.

my commander: he's, like, a commander-god. he's an expert in psychology, and a fantastic actor to boot - all this in addition to being the kind of commander that always behaves exactly as he should and doesn't miss a damn thing. i *wish* i'd had commanders like this during my service.

my mission:
my commander turned the first few days of this week into absolute hell for me, and i spent most of it trying not to cry from sheer frustration... but as of two nights ago i managed to prove myself to him and the last two days were awesome. i failed in a couple of my objectives, but i managed to bring the team closer together (even if it was initially out of anger with my management style) and everything wrapped up nicely. i'm actually proud of them at the moment ^_^

my abysmal failure:
i'm not counting the number of times i lost soldiers or delayed classes. what really got to me was one of my teammates, a kid who everyone agrees is not officer material, who keeps taking advantage of my inability to play word games in hebrew and throws a wrench into anything that works. he did something disgusting yesterday and i reported it to my commander, but he's only going to deal with the incident on sunday so i've no idea how this is going to go.

i have a feeling that things could go badly for me because he's a good talker and a sneaky, underhanded bastard. i tried to talk to him afterwards, but he doesn't get that i talk the way i talk because i am who i am, and he can't bring himself to listen to my point of view. i know that the rest of the team understands my position, but i don't really know if they have the power to keep him leashed.

this week we formally learned about command and management, and i sat in shock as it dawned on me that i was a terrible commander during the 2005 / 2006 episode. i mean, i knew i made loads of mistakes but there were essential things that i never even thought about implementing... that i'd never heard of. it's all starting to make sense!

anyway, there's still a bunch of things to get down (about ten or so more posts-worth) but i have got stuff to do.