Mailed blog – written by Julian

30 Jan 11

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a rule follower.  I like order and regiment.  This is why I knew Army life would be good for me.  Call me a goodie-goodie, but I like to do what’s expected of me.  After four weeks, half of our platoon has realized what is expected of us and the other half is still treating this like summer camp.  This is very frustrating and requires a load of patience.  The tensions are high, blow ups are frequent, and I’m glad Gomez is my battle buddy.  The drill sergeants aren’t going to treat us like we’re in White Phase until we start acting like it and showing them we deserve it.  Anyway, there’s a lot of talking and screwing around still going on and I’m not sure what it’ll take to get that to stop.  Unfortunately, we are rewarded and punished as a team.  If one is talking, we all are talking.

Like I said, Gomez and I are really glad we’re battle buddies – good thing, because we are stuck together like Velcro 24/7.  We agree that we can’t imagine being paired up with anyone else.  There’s a definitely a trip to San Antonio, Texas for me and to the Twin Cities for her.  We both fall in the half of “rule follower’s” but we have really good humor about the whole thing.

Today was a nice Sunday.  Church was a gospel concert.  And dad, the sound board was all sorts of wrong and I couldn’t understand a word that was being sung.  Therefore I didn’t enjoy the experience too much.  It was a jumpin scene and I had some good time to ponder but I’ll be glad for the regular service next Sunday.  The rest of the day was spent outside cleaning the grounds.  It was warm and 75 (I’m guessing).  I applied sun block 4 times.  Tomorrow we’re back at the shooting range for week two.  Bang, bang.

P.S.  I really try to remember what I’ve shared before; I hope I’m not too repetitive.