Decided. I would request to work in the refet. My fate was sealed.

When we all went to look at the placement listing the following morning, I was, indeed, assigned to milking duty at 5 a.m.

I thought, how fun to milk cows. Little me in a little gingham dress squatted on a stool under a pretty little tame cow. Yeah, right.

So, I showed up to work bright eyed at 5:00 the following morning, anxious to get to work. They were just finishing up the morning milking which started at 3:30. Yes, they were FINISHING at 5am. So, when they were done, they gave me my own third-hand pair of plastic shoes, a bucket of warm soapy water, and a scrubby sponge. The task was simple. For the next seven weeks, at 5 a.m. every day but Saturday, I’d be the one who came in after the morning milking to wash cow poop off the walls.

Scrubbing was no easy task. The stuff really sticks. It took me roughly an hour to scrub down the twenty-four milking stalls. When I finished, the refet folks sat down to 6 a.m. coffee break. (the milk was fresh, let me tell you). There were cookies, too. There's really nothing that makes one as hungry as the smell of fresh cow poop in the morning.

My other duties, which changed daily, included milking sick cows--I will not go into depth about the smell of the cottage-cheesy substance that came out of those sore udders, moving (or should I say "mooving") cows from one group to another, and piling old used tires on top of the silage heap. Was that fun or what?!

Moving cows was the most difficult task of all. First, I had to run faster than cows. And cows run fast. And cows run fast through their their own manure (which, by the way, comes straight in through the holes in the plastic shoes, causing them to stick to the feet...although the cool manure feels strangely refreshing between the toes) Second, I had to be able to, with the help of a little plastic stick, cull certain cows from the herd without getting other cows mixed from one group to the next. I, without fail, would lose one cow to the kibbutz every day. Picture a lone cow, running, as fast as he can, throughout the kibbutz. Yup. My fault. Every time.

Believe it or not, though, the positives strongly outweighed the negatives. These truly were the most fun people I’d met in a long time. I guess wading through crap all day long has to give you a sense of humor. There were constant water fights with the hoses that dangled from the milking stalls, there was laughing when poop splattered on your face (is it good for the skin? I’m not sure), and squirting milk from an udder into your coffee cup is just naturally funny. Natural and funny.

Obviously, it didn’t take me long to discover the real reasons why all the "refet people" did everything together. The good times and grossness made it perfectly clear. We had a good time together, and nobody else could stand to be around us.

The afternoon milking began at 11 am every day, so our crew had to be finished with lunch by then. We came straight from the refet, only to head back there, so aside from the fact that we were the only people having lunch before 11, we smelled really bad. I wouldn’t have sat down with me if I were somebody else.

My fellow Year Course friends all enjoyed in their respective work venues. However, they didn’t like mine. About three days after I started working in the refet, we developed a strange fly problem on our porch. I always hosed off my shoes well when leaving the cow shed, but I guess some odors just attract insects. When the problem moved inside the room towards my laundry bag, it got a little out of control. I guess that’s the price you pay...

So, if I had it to do all over again, I’d volunteer for doody duty in a heartbeat. And even though they fired me after two weeks (I did lose cows almost every day), there was something there that completed my Israel trip for me. I can say I’ve milked a cow. And I definitely enjoyed it.

Gabi is the Director of Special Projects and editor of JVibe.com at Jewish Family & Life. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and is a recent graduate of Brandeis University.