Done With Training

In order to leave the country your training has to be "validated". All this time everything I've done has been recorded and we turned it all in Friday. Some people look over it and check to make sure you has the right skills set to go to Iraq. This, like everything else in the army, changes pretty regularly. So for the last three days we've done the same class three times in a row. First they told us if we did it as a unit it would count. So we did. Then they said," no, your going to have to go out in the field again and have someone else give you the class." Alright, whatever. Then they said, "no, maybe what you did was good but we got rid of the roster", so instead of making a new roster and having everyone sign it we had to do the class again. Finally, they weren't sure again if it would pass so to be absolutely positively sure we better do the class one more time.

If you got lost in that last paragraph don't worry, I lived it and I still don't understand it. However, we're finally done and should be validated by about the middle of the week. Once we're validated they're going to let us take leave for a week or more. We have a definite date we need to be back, but the date we can actually go on leave depends on when they consider us validated. Either way I should get at least a week, probably more. Then I'll come back and fly to Kuwait the very next day. It looks like we'll spend a few weeks in Kuwait before going into Iraq. Then the adventure will start a whole new chapter.

For now, all I have to do is wake up, go to formation and then do nothing. Not too bad. So far we haven't done any P.T. but they say since we're done training we should start. So, starting Tuesday we have to get up earlier and go running. I know it'll pay off in the long run, but who wants to get up earlier and run?

One thing I forgot about the army was that everyone smokes. Non smokers are the overwhelming minority. The crappy part is that every so often all the people whether you smoke or not have to do a "police call" in the smoking area. Even though there are four giant trash cans and two smaller smoking trash cans for some reason the smokers still throw most of the butts in the rocks around our barracks. So for a few hours last night we had to pick up all the cigarette butts all around the barracks. I hate that job. I didn't put them there, in fact I don't even spend any time around there because the smoke is too thick. And since every task in the Army has at least two smoke breaks involved half the time we were picking up the butts the smokers were taking a smoke break. So who does that leave picking up the stupid cigarettes? The non smokers. I guess it's good we don't walk around with live ammo all the time.

Anyway, A few people have asked about the chow hall and I've never given a good description. So here goes. You usually have three meat choices. They're usually BLAH, barbecue BLAH, or BLAH with gravy. Then there are usually two potatoes choices and mixed vegetables. The food isn't terrible but you could close your eyes, point randomly at what you wanted and it would taste exactly the same every time no matter what you were eating. I'm interested to see how they handle the food situation in Iraq. I guess I'll see soon.