In Israel, every boy and girl who reaches eighteen have to join the army. It is mandatory and it is for a minimum of three years for boys and a year and eight months for girls. During the eleventh and twelfth grade you go through several classification processes, in which the army determines where will everyone serve. The process of classification includes several tests, some of them are physical and others are in math and Hebrew. So on the day you are drafted you suppose to know where you are going to serve and what you are going to do, at least for the first few months of your service.

For me the experience of joining the army at the age of eighteen was very difficult. I felt that these are my best years but instead of taking advantage of them I am going to the army. In other countries, when a person reaches eighteen he is usually going to college and "start his life". I on t

It has been more than four years since that day. Today, when I look back at that day I know that it was not that black, the weather was not that rainy. It was me who saw things that way. I think that after serving in the army for three years I became mature and I found out many new things about myself, things that you discover only in situation like you run across in the army. You have to deal with things that other people can only see on movies. Today, I understand how important it is to serve in the army. When later I became the commander of new soldiers, I saw in their eyes exactly the same look that I had that day. If I had to go back I would do everything exactly the same. It was worth it.

We then went to the commons, which can serve food for 600 people. In the army everything has a time limit that is determined by the commander, so we had 30 minutes to eat. I had no appetite, and when I saw the food I felt nauseous, since it looked dry and tasteless. After the 30 minutes were up we stood outside like we were ordered, and we got wet from the rain, and we were shaking from the cold. It was already 3pm and it seemed to me like the sun had not come out the whole day.

From there our commander took us to a big parking lot full of buses. He told us that we are going to the basic training base. We went on the bus and we rode for two hours, which allowed me to rest for a while and to rearrange my stuff. When we got there it was already dark and a new commander introduced himself to us. He did not tell us his name, only repeated that we have to call him "The commander". He taught us how to stand in rows of three, and what we have to do every time we saw him. He made us run all over the base and finally took us to our tents. The tent was big, and wet from the rain. The bed was actually a piece of hard canvas. It was obvious that sleep was going to be very hard and uncomfortable.

In the first station they took our fingerprints. The army does that in case they will have to identify a corpse. My hands were dirty from the ink. We went on to the second station where they

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Uri Kenig, , reaches eighteen, soldier uniforms, 30 minutes, army commander, age eighteen, wet rain,
Approximate Word count = 1402
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)