So I'm officially starting a blog for a couple reasons.
One: I am incredibly bored out of my mind right now, and I figured it would be a nice way to keep the family informed on how my world is working.
Two: I've always wondered why such nerds (Kevin... cough cough) ha ha.. had blogs, so we'll see how exciting this can become.
Three: .... .. To keep the family informed.. hah
Four: I never got the letters and pictures out to the family that I wrote 4 months ago, so maybe this will make up for it. :]
I guess Ill go ahead and start from the beginning - Basic training.
(This may be an incredibly lonnnggggg first posting)
I left January 14th, arrived 10 PM (or 22 as we call it now. haha) and the fun began. The first thing I thought was... Wow.. Sailors REALLY do have bad mouths. Sometimes I'm still not used to all the cursing. The next thing I thought was "what in the heck did I just get myself into?" but at the same time, I was already proud that I had finally chosen my path. :]
The first 24 hours were the most ridiculous hours I've ever lived in my life. The first thing we did was line up for clothing and other things, now let me tell you IT WAS A LOT OF STUFF! We got bags and bags of things. Which all ended nicely with a 630$ bill. haha
We then changed, into our navy sweats, yellow NAVY shirt, NAVY sweat pants, our sweater tied around our waist, a nice white sock with our valuables in it hanging from our pants, and our dog tags with a pen hanging from them. Outside of our shirt of course, which was, of course, developed a bad habit, and definitely a no-no from that night on.
We were then sent in for our drug and pregnancy test, which started with walking laps and laps around a huge group of chairs, taking a drink from the drinking fountain every time you made a lap. After our group "squat" we got to stand in a long line holding the pee level with our shoulders..
We did A LOT of sitting, trying not to fall asleep in the middle of night. OH! And don't you DARE touch your face! That was the No-No of all No-Nos. It was very sweet of them to try to keep us from getting sick, or maybe they just needed some ridiculous rule for us to practice. ha ha. I can't remember everything we did that night anymore. But I do remember the "Moment of Truth". It was every ones final chance to mess up their future lives by telling the NAVY about the mistakes in their pasts. But most people, before they left, had been told by their recruiter to NEVER tell them anything in this moment of time. So... I didn't.. Not that I had anything to tell them. But they really do scare you! They make you feel like a man framed for murder, who over time starts to think he actually committed the crime. ha ha. I kept my cool. :]
So anyways at about 6 in the morning, after a nice 8 hours of nonsense we got to our compartment and joined the rest of the people that had arrived the day before us.... The ones waking from their first nights slumber.. We placed our nice 630$ bag full of goodies behind our new bunk and lined up for chow... The worst chow of my life.
Over time things got better in boot camp (now officially called Basic Training), less strict. You get an awesome notebook when you first arrive, and every time you go to chow you have to bring it with you, and while you wait in the ridiculously long line you have to "pretend" to read this thing. It has the Sailors creed, Seven General Orders, Chain of command, and a couple more things, but I learned all of that before I left for "Basic Training". So I just had to look into these blank pages, turned towards the wall, wishing that the next 8 weeks of my life would go a little faster! But, it still wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought...
If I keep going at this rate.. this blog will take me hours and hours to write and a pretty long time for you to read as well.. So I'll skip all of the little details for now.
Anyways, every morning we would wake up to a horrible woman yelling. Get dressed as fast as possible, but beware, you couldn't wear your sweats into the bathroom. The first couple weeks were spent putting stamps (our names, division number, and last four of social security number) on all of our gear, and learning how to correctly fold and stow all of this so called mentioned gear into our bunks. Learning our Sailors Creed, Seven General Orders, Ranks and Recognition, Chain of Command (which was soon to change.. :[ ) etc... Still no working out....
After two weeks, and the end of Processing day hold our "RDCS" (recruit divisions commanders) were finally allowed to IT us (Intense training).... which wasn't so intense.. Not for me at least, there were many girls whimpering and whining, which just made our consequences that much worse.. ha. We all quickly learned what was wrong and what was right.
We also moved into another building, The USS Arizona.. Crazy.. I go all the way across the country... and still end up in Arizona. haha
It was the "show ship", the ship that all the important people came to visit while in lovely Recruit Training Command.
Of course, there were three Physical Fitness Accessments (PFA). I never had any trouble with them.
We did a lot of computer based classes, some incredibly boring, and some incredibly long.
(we still do these... still incredibly boring, still incredibly long. ha ha)
We had a book with many miscellaneous topics in it that we were tested on.
We shot 9mms and shotguns. (Both, soooo much fun... didn't do very well though. ha)
We did some hands on deckwork. Working with lines, bollards, chocks, etc..
Firefighting... Gas Chamber.. Ooops sorry.. "Confidence Chamber".
Which I was so worried about, ended up not being so bad for me. I didnt have many reactions. Barely any when compared to my other "Shipmates".
I even had a job.. Woo. I was in "Ship Staff", which basically meant I mustered once a day, in the afternoon to clean the building.. We also stood watches for the entire building, rather than our divisional compartment.
Almost everything we did gave us the chance to get a flag. Which we would march with, and graduate with. There were several flags. There was an academic flag, inspections flag, marching flag, fitness flag. (You can see them in the above picture.)
There was also the divisional flag, division number, CNO flag, Ship flag and Cheerios flag (which you had to win captains cup to get... we didn't win Captains cup.. It was a fun fitness tournament)
Battle Stations... Ohhhh ho ho Battle stations.
Were not technically supposed to talk about it. We signed a page 13. Which is basically a "Don't you dare do it page".
It was 9 or so hours of working on a replica ship that Universal Studios built. Putting out fires, escaping smoke filled rooms, practicing pulling into port, pulling injured victims from devastated areas (the "victims" weighed like 200 pounds. It took five people to lift them, the more you shook them or moved them in the wrong way, they would actually moan and groan at you. It was pretty creepy actually.
And after Battle Stations was the time that we had all worked so hard for over the past 8 weeks.
The capping ceremony.
Our "recruit ball caps" were replaced by "NAVY ball caps". We were officially sailors. Its a very emotional ceremony. Everyone cries... Yes.. Even the so called "Men". ha ha.
Our RDC's treat us like human beings for the first time, and tell us how proud they are, and yes.. they shake our hands..
And then... We got to march back to our "ship" and stay awake for another 16 hours, once again.. not human beings.. ha ha
Boot Camp, I still like to think of it as a joke, compared to everything you've heard and everything you've seen in the movies and tv shows.. But I loved it. I don't know how to explain it, nor do I think I ever will. But I felt like something. An incredible something in the making.
I met a lot of cool people, and I will never forget our cranky old RDC's.
Graduation was pretty neat. A TON of people were there.
People were fainting left and right, dropping like flies.
Mom, Bob, Sarah and Oli came.
The best thing after two months!! :]
It was a very short weekend with them.
But I got to see Chicago for the first time.
Millennium park.
The bean.
Aquarium.
Green St. Patty's day river.
Boy... do I miss Chicago. :[
