And so, it ends.

Wow. So...less than a week left. We practiced the grad parade on friday, and for the first time it really felt like we're almost DONE!!! It's weird, because we're all so excited, but there are a lot of people that I'll miss. I thought I'd hate living in a room with so many other people, but now it'll be strange to be alone and not have awesome friends around all the time.

Of course, there are others that I will be very glad to NOT have around all the time.

I guess it evens out.

So the weekend was a lot of partying for people, since it's the last weekend we'll have together, and I won't go into the stupidity that arose from that. I did have a fun evening hanging out with a bunch of the people that attacked us in Week 12. They are all apparently waiting for courses to start and so were sent to St. Jean to act as victims/opponents for the recruits. They said they had fun taunting us.

Anyways, other than a lot of parade practice, grad week is a whole lot of nothing. They made me course senior all week, which sucks because it's more work when all everyone (including me) wants to do is less work. It's supposed to be a "congratulations for getting top marks, you're wonderful so we'll put you in charge" kind of thing, but I could do without it. It's the same deal for "Platoon Commander." That's actually kind of cool though, because I get to march by myself in the parade, but I really think there are other people that could do the yelling of commands a lot better than me. I'm not naturally loud to start with, so trying to be heard by people 20 feet behind me while a band is playing....not so much!



Wait...did I say less than a week left? Well, by the time I'm writing the rest of this, I'm looong gone!

Did I say nothing happens in grad week? I meant during the day, when we have an hour for lunch, our inspections are closed locker, and basically just to make sure our dress uniform is intact for wearing at the grad parade. Or to make sure our rifles are clean so they can be returned quickly afterwards. Our classes are pretty much trips to return stuff or fill out paperwork or find out our travel arrangements.
Of course, things DO happen at night.

Like the course party.

Just to give you a bit of an idea...the day afterwards, the Sergeant told us that we were his worst, most dysfunctional platoon ever, but we also had the best course party.

There was a buffet, some speeches in which old jokes were revisited and the instructors were let into some of the ones they didn't know about. Then one guy who was always joking with our Master Corporal in a less than savoury way (he was also rather drunk) came out in a sheet wrapped around him like a dress and veil and lip synced some cheesy love song (I don't even remember which one)while he "proposed"....to the MCpl. It was hilarious, and I believe there are videos.

Then the dancing started. The instructors were not drinking, but kind of acting like they were. The recruits were definitely drinking and not having to act like we were. But we all danced for and I think we had all of us out on the floor (even our straight laced Warrant Officer!) when "Tonight's gonna be a good night" came on. Somehow it didn't inspire the same dread that it had the week before. Anyways, it was a good night, though it finished early when the place closed down at 10. We were told we had 15 minutes to get upstairs though we didn't have to go to bed until lights out at 11. But, when we got up there around quarter after, the instructors started running through (still in their civilian clothes, which in itself was entertaining) yelling at everyone to get to bed they were turning the lights off NOW!

And that was the end of that. Or so we thought....we found out the next day that they had also run through our sister platoon's quarters (they had their party with ours sort of...but they were mostly in a different section and not having nearly so much fun) telling them to get to bed and jacking them up. A couple of those recruits talked back, I guess not realized that these guys were our staff. We got to watch our Sergeant back in his uniform yelling at them the next day and pointing them out to their own staff. It sounds terrible, but one of the funniest things to all of us the whole course was to watch our Sergeant jack up other platoons. They never knew what to do, because very few staff are as hardass as him. They always get this scared kitten look and just stand there and take it until he's done. It's funny because we know what it's like and it's not us. It happened a lot in the last week actually. It was like since our course was pretty much done, there wasn't much to get us in trouble for, so he went out of his way to do it to other people. Good times.

As for the rest of the week. Well, we had our grad parade. No one collapsed, even though we were standing in one spot for a very long time. Families came, Moms cried, speeches were dry, siblings sighed and finally we were DONE. There was a reception after, which was neat because we all got to meet each other's families. More beer was had, and this time with the instructors too. Friends said goodbye, and many many pictures were taken. Have I mentioned that I love having Korean friends? MANY pictures are up on Facebook.

So it's not really goodbye, since it's so easy to keep in touch with the people I want to. But we've all gone to different cities to finish training or to postings. I've heard from a few people about how they still have to have inspections or share rooms with 7 other people or...well, those guys are going through more of the same I guess, but for me, Basic training is done. I can't say "it's been good"...but it's been a good thing to do. I'm glad I went through it and had tough instructors. I was talking with one of my old platoon mates and he was saying that if he'd had an experience like some of the other platoons (we'd met a bunch of guys on our flights over) that he'd feel gypped for not really getting the experience. And even though there were some things that were terrible at the time, I'd have to agree. I'm glad it was so hard. There were days when we wanted to die, but at the end of every day, and every week we'd say "that wasn't so bad." And really? It wasn't. It's just like anything else, any other hard day at work...you just push on and keep going and make it through the day.

Okay whoa. I'm starting to get too philosophical about all this. Dude, it was awesome, but I'm glad it's done. I guess that's it for this blog too so I'll just close off with one last warcry.

AMPED ANGRY AND READY FOR WAR! OORAHH!!!

Roger. Out.