Continuing on...

Nov 26th

I am definitely learning about the military here. It took 3 hours to buy a bunch of crap for my room - some laundry soap, mouthwash, hangers and a shoe shine kit. Ok maybe there were a few more things, but not many! It does make a weird kind of sense though. Paying someone to organize 60 people's stuff when we could be learning about a soldier's life (i.e. waiting) would be inefficient. And of course, since we have to go all together, we have to wait for everyone to get through the line before we can go anywhere else.

Yes, we really do go EVERYWHERE together. Downstairs at 5:15 to line up for breakfast (because it takes a half an hour just to get in), then line up to go to classes - which are usually filling about paperwork! Again with the military efficiency! 1 hour to fill out a form, but for the clerks it's 1 hour to get 60 done. Faster but still annoying to us. Not that that counts for anything.

Our platoon is pretty great. People seem to be getting along well and there hasn't been too much trouble. I say that now, when we're still in week zero - not even officially in yet. Speaking of "official"...we get our combats tomorrow! Everyone is really excited. It's been really annoying to be the only hundred people or so in regular clothes and we stick out so much. Oh man...is that indoctrination talking?? Could be, but more likely just that we already feel like we stick out so much for not knowing how to do anything right. Wait a minute! It's probably both, and damn sneaky of them! Go conditioning...seeing the Graduation parade today was definitely more of the same, but we called it "Good for Morale". Of course, it was that too.

I'll admit I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate here. I can these things for what they are and still feel the effects. I consider both ways of looking at it (indoc/conditioning vs. morale) to be true. It's pretty interesting that it IS good to be a part of something like this. Even if "this" is only our mismatched group of freaks called "Keable Platoon".

The grad parade was cool though. There was a real live marching band so I got to be like "hey guys, that's going to be my job!" which everyone else thought was pretty neat. They were definitely the most exciting part. Of course seeing the actual graduating platoons march so well was also very cool. Afterwards our instructor said one of the few positive things we've heard so far. He told us that 14 weeks ago, these guys were just as bad as we are now and that we will be that good by the time we finish. Very reassuring, especially considering how terrible we are now! Speaking of "now", I am now 45 minutes late for bed! *Gasp* The Horror! ...up at 5am again tomorrow. Ugh.