yom kippur

First of all i would like to say happy birthday to my mum.

Yesterday was Yom Kippur.
The holiest day of the Jewish calendar .
It was the first time i was in Israel for this occasion . I was very surprised to see no cars driving whatsoever.
Everybody was just walking in the streets , cycling or on rollerblades . I stayed in most of the day because I didn't want to get too thirsty . I did go for a bike ride for about an hour , just to take advantage of having no traffic to explore the city.

Today was a pretty slow day . I couldn't sleep last night so i woke up very late this morning.( not really morning anymore) . Started my day by going to the gym , then i went to the beach for a swim.
I got a bit hungry so went down the street for a Lafa . The guy that works there is from holland , so we speak dutch together . In Belgium its more probable that you will find a foreigner working in your local durum restaurant , here its the Dutch . It reminded me a bit of home .

I just felt like writing something today to keep the rhythm going .

Lishkat gius , First time

Lishkat gius is the main recruitment center for all the people that want to join the army.
Yesterday evening I received a call from Yuval telling me I had to be there at 8 Am the next morning.
Obviously I was excited . I thought to myself i should leave early so that I wouldn't get stuck in morning traffic witch is terrible in Tel-aviv. So at 5:45 my alarm clock goes off, took a shower and had a quick breakfast leaving my apartment at around 6:30 . I had heard and looked up the bus i needed to take (64).
Once on the bus at quarter to 7 I thought to myself 'this is going to take a while ' . Lucky me , there was no morning traffic what so ever ... i arrive at 7 o'clock , an hour early and nothing has opened yet. This was my first wait of the many .

At around 8 everything started to open up. I was let in and went to my appointment . There the woman who was assisting me told me what was going to happen today .
1. Test your hebrew skills by writing a couple of sentences and speaking .
2. Pee in a cup ( For a urine test).
3. Personal interview about my childhood and current life.
4. Medical exam.
5. Eye test.
6. IQ test .




1. My hebrew speaking is ok , i can have full conversations without many problems. When it comes to writing on the other hand i'm a bit (very) rusty .

2. This probably was the easiest test for me since i skipped going to the toilet in the morning .
Test came back negative for drugs and normal for all the rest .

3. This test took about an hour. I had to speak in Hebrew as much as i could. We started off with my childhood and school situation , so that was a long story. Then i had to speak about my best friends and normal friends, why i was here , why i wanted to join the army, what i wanted to do ...

4.The Medical exam was easy for me. All I had to do was take me shoes off and lay down so the doctor could examine me . Done in  5 minutes and i was off to my eye test.

5. The eye test was funny because I'm colour blind, so they had me arrange a whole load of colours according to how bleu they were (not so easy!!!). It took me about half an hour to get out of there.

6. The IQ test wasn't as hard as everybody said it was going to be . It only took 45 minutes instead of two hours. I thought I had made a mistake by finishing so quickly , but the person in charge told me it was normal.

After the last test i was allowed to go home, this was at 2pm. Somehow I've got this weird feeling that I'm going to have to return because they forgot to ask me something...


That's all for today , now i just wait till they call me back in again .

First two weeks in Tel Aviv

I've been in Israel for a bit over 2 weeks.
I love it here , the weather is great , i'm right next to the beach . What more would i want?
Although I don't like to admit it i do miss my family friends AND DOGS in 'La Belgique'.
So what have i done here for the past 2 weeks?
As i told you in my first blog i found a nice apartment with 3 great roommates . I'm completely settled in now. The day i moved in to my place i called the Gius , the recruitment agency for the IDF . i had an appointment that same day . they took a copy of my passport and told me to do 2 things.
1. get my document saying that i'm jewish signed at the jewish agency in Hashmonaim .
2. get a student visa for 2 years at the Government Complex.

The first one was very easy , they signed it without any hesitation .
from their office i started walking to the government complex that took me about 20 minutes.
once there i realised that i had forgotten my passport at the Jewis agency (stupid me). I started my walk back , picked it up and began my journey back to the complex.
When i went to the information desk asking for the Visa section they said it had just closed 5 minutes ago , (sigh) . They did give me the forms i had to fill in so i could come back the next day .

The next day i returned . I had to take a number and wait in the waiting room (number 505 , the monitor was at 300). That weird feeling came over me of just knowing this place is going to close down before its my turn , so i cut the line a bit when nobody responded to number 305. The form they had given me was the wrong one , but no worries they gave me a new one that i could fill in on the spot :D .THANK G*D.
Once done i was out of there to return to the gius with my documents. Surprise surprise , their scanner was broken , as always just be patient in Israel . After half an hour of waiting they finally got the idea of using a different one .

 PS : Once i have received my camera from Belgium i will upload pics of my place and City

Introduction to me :)

Hey everyone!

My name is sam. This is my first blog ever so give me some time to get used to writing .

i'm 20 years old , born in Belgium (Antwerp), into Basketball , going to the gym and Photography.

I've had the idea of coming to israel to join the army for a long time now , but at the end of my last school year was the time that i really started seriously thinking about it. I decided to go to the IDF (Israeli Defence Force). I told my parents of my decision , they were very proud of me and told me that was the right choice for me . My parents and i got started on planning on how to arrange everything i needed and started contacting the necessary people. The first person we contacted was Yuval from the Gius . he told me to arrange some documents ( Medical document from a doctor , original birth certificate and a certificate that declares I'm Jewish).Once we had those taken care of the only this they would inform us is ' the moment u land call them and make an appointment to sign up. 

so needless to say we were a bit confused . 

Finding a place to live was hard . trying to find something in Israel while I was still in Belgium was not as easy as I thought it would be . I had no previous experience looking or renting a place to live. Let alone in a different country . 

At the end of my school career i knew i wanted to go . 

My family and i went on Holiday to Vietnam for a week and a half. When we got back we only had 2 weeks to arrange everything so it was a little tense . we Didn't find a place to live so we came up with a plan to go to israel ( Dad and I ) and visit my dads Best friend  . From there we would search the internet for apartments for rent with roommates . After a couple of hours of people not picking up or saying the Ad is not relevant anymore we got a call back . A Friendly guy called Noah asked me a couple of questions and when i would like to see the apartment , i said 'right away ' .

So Half an hour later we were looking at a very nice Penthouse duplex with 3 roommates . This was the first place we actually went to see and i liked it . Noah told us to keep looking for places because he wasn't sure if he could rent the room . so we left there hoping he would call back. exactly 4 minutes after we left he called back and asked when i could move in and sign the contract . We went back to the apartment and signed . 2 days later i moved in .