Blog entry #1 8/27/11

FIRST 4 DAYS:
This is a long blog entry so make sure you make time LOL. I arrived at the airport around 12:30 pm on Wednesday. My orders were to report directly to the USO Office, but I went and ate some lunch first. I reported around 1:30 pm but was told that the Navy people wouldn't be there until 5 pm. There were a few other recruits waiting, and during the next few hours many others came in. There were a total of about 200+ recruits that processed that night.
At 5 pm a couple Navy guys came and immediately began yelling at us. I was beginning to get nervous. I was on the first bus that took us to the base at Great Lakes-about a 45 minute drive. Once we all got there, the drill instructors, or RDC's as they call them here at bootcamp, yelled us through a multitude of processing steps. One of the first things was a pee test. I ended up holding my little jar full of pee at shoulder height for over 2 hours before they took it from me. Thats when I decided that this was really going to suck. We did other things that night including boxing up all our clothes we were wearing and exchanging them for new skivies (underwear), shorts, sweat pants, shirt and hoodie. We also got all new hygiene items. Basically they took everything away from us that made us "us" and replaced it with Navy crap turning "us" into "sailor recruits". These sweats by the way.....I've been wearing for the last 3 1/2 days. We've changed our skivies, shorts and shirts but my sweatpants and sweatshirt have not been washed. I even slepp in them. We got divided into our divisions-mine being 354-and went to our temporary ship, or living quarters. I'm living in a room with 80 guys-bunkbeds surrounding the bulkhead(outerwall). It's definitely been interesting.
Most of Thursday was spent standing at attention-whether we were in line for the barber shop or in line for the chow hall. So far that has been the worst part and hardest part of boot camp. After standing on my feet for 30+ hours, my back, hips, knees and feet were killing me. They haven't been PT'ing (physical training0 us cause we haven't been through medical yet. Finally, at 10 pm on Thursday, we were able to go to sleep. After being awake for 40 hours, I was definitely ready for sleep. I had watch at 2 am so I had to wake up and stand guard for an hour, but come 3 am, I had no problem getting back to sleep. We were awakened at 6am by yelling form our Petty Officers. Friday was spent learning how to do stuff and stenciling all our clothes. We also learned how to make our racks (beds) so we did that many, many, many times. There is even a special way to take off and display our dirty sheets! I, of course, am the best at making my rack. Chief even asked me my name after looking at my rack! One of our RDC's favorite things to do is to have us throw our mattresses on the floor and put them back on the bed. He starts with having us do it once in 15 seconds. Then when some idiot's can't do it, he makes us do it twice in 30 seconds. So of course some can't do it, so he then has us do it 4 times in 40 seconds, then 7 times in 40 seconds. They make it impossible, but fortunately for me, I know it's just a game they are playing with our minds. I go along with it and just keep quiet and do what I'm told.
One of their favorite words here starts with a F and ends with an -ers (LOL). if they get through one sentence without saying some form of that word, I'd be surprised. It's almost comical watching these RDC's be so tough. Today while we were learning how to fold and stack our skivies, my favorite moment so far happened. We took almost 2 hours folding and stacking our skivies. Once we folded and stacked them we had to bring them up to the table to show one of our female RDC's. Every pile that was brought up ended up getting thrown on the floor and told to do it right. After about 20 minutes of this, she asked what was wrong with all us mother f****ers and said she wanted someone who was perfect to come up. So naturally I went up. There was one guy who beat me there, but his pile got thrown all over the room. I set my pile down and she tried her best to find something wrong but couldn't. So she put my pile of skivies on the table to show everyone else what perfect pile looks like. I was pretty proud. The next hour was spent with her continuing to call people names and chuck their piles all over the place. It turned out to be very comical and we even got a few smiles out of her.
Now I'm laying in bed. I'm supposed to be sleeping, but I wanted to write down some stuff before I forgot.
So far boot camp has been bearable. Not too tough, except for the long periods of standing. I'm really surprised at how stupid some people really are. I'm learning everything at the same time as everyone else, but end up having to teach them myself when they sit there with a nervous, blank stare on their face. I guess that's the natural leader in me coming out. It also makes me very thankful for the way I was raised and the education I have. There is definitely a difference between those of us with a college education and those with barely a high school diploma.
OK, I'm getting tired so I'm going to bed. Sorry for the long blog entry. And a big thanks to my sister Dede for typing this all up for me. More to come in a couple days. There will be multiple blog entries at once cause I'm only able to send out letters on Sundays. R :)