Mah Tovu Ohalecha Jacob

So yeah, we sleep in tents. And yeah, it's sweltering. And yeah, we don't get enough sleep. No, there isn't anything keeping the bugs out. Electricity? In your dreams (If you drear at all, that's a good sign, it means you're sleeping.) Personal space? Haha, good one!So after three weeks in a tent, getting back home on the weekend is like a dream come true. Those Vietnam-era U.S. army surplus, olive green structures don't provide much protection from anything.
But the great part about it is waking up in a room full of people whom I've never met before, yet they are my greatest friends. To hear 15 guys learning at the end of an 18-hour day during their half-hour of free time. The tins of homemade cookies that get passed around every night from a different guy don't replace the fact that I don't have parents in Israel, bt they help brdige the gap. Knowing that if there's anything I need, 5 other guys who have that item will jump on me to try to give it to me. Life in a tent is great in that aspect. And it's just not the same in the dorms on the weekends, where you have to fend for yourself.
It's only in the Hesder unit where guys fight over who get's to schlep my dirty socks home for the weekend, to give them back to me washed. Hesder is the only place where our commander gives us an official order to say a D'var Torah at every meal. If I need a place for Shabbat, I have 34 standing invitations from the 34 guys in our 3 tents. They aren't tents, they are incubators. We came in from 8 diffenent Yeshivot, from Yerucham to Carmiel, and were turned over three weeks in a family of 35 brothers. Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaakov!