Friday

I am finally up to date. Hopefully this isn’t boring all of you. I am just trying to get as much information in as I can. If not, I will use this to write my memoirs some day. I woke up at four for the formation at 450 and then proceeded to the Headquarters office for more paperwork. We were given our inprocessing checklist folders and filled out minor stuff. Somehow that took us at least an hour. Then we walked down the chow hall where we stood in line for literally 45 minutes.
Let me try to paint you a picture of what it looks like. The chow hall is at the bottom of about thirty stairs with a cement area in front. At the top of the stairs is a HUGE area that is covered. The barracks and other forms of offices run alongside the entire area on both sides. This is where all the new Soldiers form up. All of them…from Soldiers on day one to Soldiers about to ship out to basic training. There are hundreds of these poor kids with their shaved heads, camelbacks and pts on. Every time an NCO (Non Commissioned Officer) walks by them, they scream out “AT EASE!” or if an Officer walks by “ATTENTION!” It kept scaring the living crap out of me. The sounds just echo and reverberate in there. They aren’t allowed to talk in formation so it will be super quiet then a roar. Kind of funny actually.
We finally made it into the chow hall where you form two lines side by side and wind your way into where the food is served. Again, no talking allowed. In our initial briefing we were told as prior service to not talk to the trainees, etc. So I’m standing there and I hear this “PSSSST! MAAM! PSSSST! PSSST! MAAM!” I couldn’t exactly ignore him as I was the only female so I turned and this kid goes “What are you doing here?!” I wanted to mess with his head and tell him I was the first female to go through basic training but I muttered OCS and turned back around. I can almost guarantee you the kid did not know what I was talking about. The DFAC (Dining Facility) smelled horrible but I ate 2 boiled eggs and was on my way. Still too early for breakfast.
All the prior service goes as a group to the different stations to improcess. We did optometry, got a fun little card that had 250 dollars (our own money, of course, to be taken out when we get paid), spent about an hour on paperwork that should have taken ten minutes, got told we missed our dental appointment, and told we don’t get paid until July 1st. WHOAH! Good thing they are feeding and giving me a place to sleep. Haha. We went back to the DFAC for lunch upon which a DS (Drill Sergeant) yelled for everyone to get shoulder to shoulder and heel to toe. I was not comfortable with his instructions in the least and suddenly felt VERY claustrophobic. I was glad when the line started moving. Ate a lunch and then went down for our clothing issue. The civilians were really nice and fun so they made the afternoon fly by. I got issued so much stuff it was ridiculous. It will be a blast lugging this stuff around. I shouldn’t complain as I could be paying for it with my own money.
They made me change rooms in my barracks out but at least I don’t have a roommate now. I walked down to the shopette and got some snacks for the weekend. On the way back one of the Sergeants that works here stopped me and asked me where I was from. We had been deployed to Khandahar at the same time. He recognized me but I had no clue who he was; I just recognized the unit he was talking about. The Army is a very small place sometimes. Apparently someone pissed off the DS so instead of having a normal weekend where we can go off post and even up to Atlanta we are on lockdown. We can go to the little store and that’s about it. So my plans for the weekend include sitting in my room reading, writing and sleeping.