Ziva, GF now makes you take your vacation in 2 blocks of 26 days. You bid yearly for those blocks. It may be possible to get those blocks back to back but with the way the bid system works that is virtually impossible. This poses the problem that run into - you only get ONE leave ticket to your home base if it is not of the GF system.
You are correct about the days off - you get 26 days in a row. The BIG issue here is that the way the leave bids work you can only start you leave on certain days (ie. 1st, 7th, 14th, 21st). So if you start your leave in the middle of the month GF can (and does) work you hard for the first half. They prorate the days off in this situation (so you get 4 days) but do NOT prorate the max hours you work before OT. At GF 75 hours is the OT threshold so, since they prorate days off, in this situation they should prorate the hours so that the threshold becomes 37.5 (half). They don't do this and you can expect to work much more and not get the OT credit.
Here is hoping this overhaul this system!!!