Days of Excellence - (Germany) Day 339

This morning we did not have any PT, instead we headed to the office by 0615 for the trip to K-Town for Days of Excellence. I of course cannot go into the office, so I waited in my car until everyone was ready to go and headed out. I then got on the bus with everyone and promptly plugged in my headphones and took a long nap.

When we arrived the first sergeant was talking to everyone about various items, then went on about social media and blogs. The event started and one of the people being promoted was SGT T from our office. He got promoted to staff sergeant, that was pretty cool to watch because he's been working hard at it for a long time. We then went into some suicide training and then some interesting ASAP (army substance abuse program) training. The lady teaching it kept it entertaining by not using PowerPoint slides. Instead she talked about the effects of each drink and had a real time blood alcohol content meter up on the screen, showing the BAC of both a male and female after a certain number of drinks. She then had people wear the drunk goggles and perform some entertaining scenarios up in front of the crowd. When asking questions she had a goodie bag full of ASAP swag she would give to anyone with a correct answer.

The event ended with the battalion commander again going over social media and blogs, reminding people that what they say will come back and bite them. The cool thing is that SGT Steroids came up to me and asked how I was doing. He has been pretty awesome during all of this, I think because he's gone through some issues before and knows what it's like to be alienated and have the command on you all the time. I'm very thankful for him as well as the NCOs in my office that actually know me. He said they wouldn't let anything bad happen to me, I don't know if there is much he can do…but the thought is nice.

When we left the event and boarded the bus, we found out that we were not heading home, instead we were heading to Ramstein for a farewell lunch. Not everyone was too happy about that, a mandatory farewell event at a restaurant when not everyone even prepared by bringing money. When we arrived we found that they didn't make reservations, so our bus just headed to the food court instead. We ate lunch, then headed back to the office. Once there we took off for the day.