Thursday, January 26, 2012

Mandatory MLK - (Germany) Day 31

It's Thursday and that means our PT is a ruck march again. The ruck march is not too bad now that I'm prepared for it. It's nice that we perform the ruck march around PHV where we live instead of Campbell Barracks which is the post where we work. It only takes a few minutes to get back home once we're finished verses about 15 minutes when we do PT at Campbell Barracks. I noticed something today that I never really paid much attention to before, but when it comes to PT none of the women in our company seem to participate. Our NCOIC comes sometimes and may say a few announcements, but then she leaves and doesn't participate. Another female sergeant is on profile, so for the ruck march she just walks with us, but doesn't carry anything. There are a couple more in 1st platoon, but I don't see them either.

Now that the exercise is over I had some time to come home after PT and have some breakfast and coffee with my wife before heading to the office. Thursday mornings are sergeant's time training, so we headed to one of the barracks day rooms and had a class on LandNav or land navigation. It basically was a refresher on how to read maps and a compass. I guess we have an upcoming training event where we will be doing actual LandNav in the field, so this is getting us prepared.

We then headed to the office and I assumed my reading position. I did try to log on once while everyone was out smoking, but my account has yet to be created. Speaking of smoking, now that I'm at my second duty station I can say that from what I've seen, it seems like individuals in the army seem to smoke quite a bit. I have no idea what the ratio is from civilians to army smokers, but my guess is that the army has a very high rate of smokers versus the general population. I imagine it probably goes for all military as well, but I don't have any experience there. In my office now I think everyone smokes except for me and maybe our NCOIC.

I had Subway once again for lunch in the food court and then had to head to the gym for a mandatory event. The gym at Campbell Barracks is a much bigger and nicer facility than the one at PHV. I was able to register myself there, so if I get the chance I can get a workout. Maybe when we get our car, we'll get some workouts in over there instead of the tiny gym here at PHV. We'll see…but I'm getting a little off track here. The event was a celebration of Martin Luther King Junior's birthday. It was considered an EO training event which is why everyone had to go. The army takes it's mandatory training seriously and each soldier is required to complete specific training throughout the year. This event was pretty short and consisted of a slideshow showing events of the civil rights movement and then one of the black sergeants in 1st platoon dressed in a suit pretended he was Martin Luther King Jr and delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. Afterwards we ate some snacks and took off.

The rest of the day consisted of a lot of reading with one interruption. We had to place a number of key cards in numerical order. This was a pretty easy and dull job, but it gave me something to do other than just sit and read. I finished my box of cards and then watched a co-worker have issue after issue with his box. I started to think this guy may be a little retarded, I mean it's not too hard to put things in order…but he had to start over multiple times and it took him waaaay too long.

I found out I was not originally on the staff duty roster for February, but at some point someone's name was scratched off and mine was put on near the end of the month. I guess I'll be doing it a little earlier than I thought. I also found out I'll be heading off to another post to meet up with the company commander and the rest of our company tomorrow. In addition to meeting the commander I will have to attend more training. I've been through all this mandatory training before in Korea, but since I wasn't here (and our platoon has to send a certain number of people) I was chosen to attend along with a few others.

After work my boss drove over to the dry cleaners so we could drop off our dress uniforms to be cleaned and pressed. We have a class A inspection coming up next week. My first one since graduation for AIT.

After that he dropped me off at home where I had dinner with my wife and we hung out the rest of the night. She had her interview today and all went well…let's hope she's able to get the job!

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