Off to RIP holdover!

Life's been pretty boring for me when we have off days (Ben here). Some good friends I made here got shipped off to Italy after Airborne School was over. :-( They may get deployed by Christmas! Now, I have to find some other decent people to make friends with again, this is not an easy task here in the Army.

Yeah, Airborne was kinda boring. Jumping out of the airplane was not as exciting as expected. I just step off the plane, float around, then land. There's not much to it. There's no way anyone can ever break a leg doing this. I got a perfect landing on my first jump but the last one sucked! What killed me was the 5-8 hr wait time they make us sit around with our gears on and can't do anything! No talking, no napping/sleeping (3 sec with your eyes closed is considered a nap; sleep, 5 sec), no bathroom, no eating...you get the point. Awful. They promised us 8 hr sleep the night before....yeah right! More like 3-4 hr. Well, I'm glad it's over and I got my wings.

My dad came out to my Airborne graduation on Oct 30 but the plane that the Air Force sent over broke down (typical). We had 2 companies trying to graduate at the same time due to poor weather. So the plane kept on having problems. I didn't graduate until the following Tuesday, and my Dad have to get back to work, so he missed the ceremony. But I got off the base & spend the weekend with my dad.

This past weekend, we got off on Friday for a 4 day weekend due to Veteran's Day. In the Army, you need 4 consecutive training days, so they give us the weekend prior off. And there's absolutely nothing to do here. I had to do guard duty on Sunday from 6 am - noon, so there goes my chance to go to church! My ipod blew up and my laptop went home with my Dad last weekend (so my load is lighter as they told us we have to run to RIP with our bags after Airborne).

We will finally get shipped off tomorrow morning (11/10), to RIP (Ranger Indoctrination Program - a mini Ranger School) holdover. The actual RIP will start in January, so we're in holding 'til then. Everyone is real nervous; some just show it more than others. There seems to be hundreds of rumors going around that holdover really sucks. People say that holdover is much harder than RIP because they want to weed as many people out as possible. The program is >200% over capacity and only 10-15% will make it through. Yikes! You can get dropped for small infraction like a missed taped dog tags or something trivial like that. Blah. They may take my cell phone away too. It doesn't seem to be worth it, but if RIP starts right away, we wouldn't get Thanksgiving & Christmas off. That would really suck.

I don't know. This whole Army thing is wearing on me. I'm super excited to be home for Thanksgiving, despite the short time & lack of people I may not see. But I guess that's a given. I also have realized how much prayer I have behind me, and I am so very thankful. I think there's more than I can ask for and will need all of it. I'm not all that mentally strong, and that's where RIP will get me. I'm not looking forward to this whole process, but people have waited for years to get to RIP, so I'm gonna do my best and see how far I can get. Maybe I'm making this whole process and my life more difficult than it is. But I have to realize that many people have gone through this and survived.

I miss home like crazy though. Last night, I scrapped my right ankle pretty bad (thorny bush ran into me), right above my still swollen ankle. I hope that won't effect anything in the weeks ahead. It looked like a really bad cat scratch or lashed. Looks cool though, but now is not the time. Ha, ha. Well, I think that's pretty much it for now. Write to me when I have an address. Love ya all much!