August 29, 2009

Dear Family,
Just writing to give you guys my weekly report. One week down and what a week it has been. It has definitely been of of the hardest. With the early wake ups, the never ending supply of push ups, sit ups, and other interesting things they decide to make us do. In general we spend every minute involved in some task. Even when we have nothing to do we are told not to sit down or close our eyes. It's exhausting. But I definitely am enjoying myself. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we learned Army combatives. Which we were told is like a spin off of Judo. We learned everything from rear naked chokes to straight arm bars. I'm pretty good. At the end we got to go full speed on each other and I made like 4 people tap out. Not bad. We also learned the basics of bayonet fighting. It was cool to learn to beat peoples faces and thrust at their bellies (ha). I didn't really like the thought of hurting or killing someone, but I've been assured that as a Medic I will never hold more than a pistol for personal protection.

Today we went to a tower called Thunderbolt Tower and did some repelling. It was freaking awesome. It felt cool flying through the air. When I was done a Drill Sergeant (DS) told me "good job". Ha, it doesn't sound like much but it doesn't happen often and I was proud!

Some other good news happened. The other day. a DS used me as an example of something and called me "Jacobs" which is the name of the guy that stands next to me. I've never been so happy to have someone call me the wrong name. It means my blending techniques are working. Not that I'm not trying hard, because I think I'm getting pretty good at all the stuff. But I am trying not to get noticed.

Something cool happened today that you might like to hear about. The day started off pretty horrible. Yesterday we had spent the entire day wrestling and working in the hot sun and we all woke up sore and exhausted. Throughout the morning exercise drill every one was sluggish and slow. the DS's got to the point that they stopped the whole drill and told us to go change. The rest of the day went about the same and things did not look good for us. A DS came into our room, told us to drink water and stretch. Then we did a series of exercises that worked our upper body to our lower body and everything in between. By the end the floor was soaked with sweat and not one in the platoon had any gas left in the tank. The DS gave us some last words of "encouragement" (ha) and walked out.

Then one of the guys in the platoon yelled "OUTLAWS" (that's our platoon) "ARE YOU MOTIVATED?" and everyone int he room screamed at the top of their lungs a chant they had taught us. The whole floor thundered. It was like something out of a movie. From then on we worked harder and did better than we had done the whole time. It was AWESOME!

Well I'm doing well here, I'm learning pretty fast and staying out of trouble. I'm slowly getting over the feeling of always being tired and the home sickness is wearing off a little. Don't get me wrong I still shed some tears at night and I think about home dozens of time throughout the day. But I'm learning to tell myself that it will be a short time till I get home.

I love all of you so much. You guys have made my life what it is. Today in a class we talked about what made our characters and one of the first answers was family and I thought about how you all have made me what I am. I am so grateful for everything.

Your Soldier,
Justin