This Army Life...

Well hello my lovlies!

I know it's strange to see me posting on a Saturday, but I've got a little time before first formation and the internet is on its best behavior for now, so I figured I might try to crank something out. 

Unfortunately, my whole life is revolving around the military right now, so you will probably get to read a whole lot about that for the next little while. Hopefully I'll get to do some exciting things that will have nothing to do with the military and you won't be so bored with my ACU wardrobe. 

For the past two weeks, we have just been in class, which is apparently what we'll be doing for the remainder of my stay here. As of right now, AIT isn't so bad. There are a few annoying things that I wish weren't so, but I guess that is just how the military works. Things don't always go your way.

Last Wednesday when we started our course work for my job we got these study guides...Check this thing out.

Yeah...it's crazy. Luckily, the material is pretty easy, as far as I can tell. I think that this will be a pretty good warm up for college. It will get my brain in the school mind-set so I can be successful there.

Currently, I'm just chillaxing in my room killing sometime before I have to get in first formation. 

Usually, when I have down time, I straighten my boot display, make my bed, or I pretend to clean my locker. that thing...I clean it, then it's messy the next second. I swear it's impossible for it to stay clean. I do a lot of laundry and tons of working out.

Living in the barracks and sitting around all the time is causing me to understand why these types of videos are produced so often...

This video...it doesn't reflect upon my opinion of Gay people in the military..I just liked the video!

Who Do You Want To Be?

When you're in the military, although you are constantly surrounded by people, you end up being alone with your thoughts quite frequently. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I end up thinking about everything. I think about it in depth. I don't just scratch the surface but I think a thought until I scratch all the way down to the core of that thought that I think. 

For the past couple days, I've been thinking about a question that you get asked from the moment you can string words into a sentence: What do you want to be when you grow up? Don't ask why, I just have been. 

It's funny how often I got asked that question.  I'm sure it was no more or less than any other kid. My answers have changed a lot since the first time I was asked that question. I've gone from wanting to be a teacher, to wanting to be a dancer, to wanting to be a writer, to wanting to be a police officer, to wanting to be a Marine to actually becoming a Soldier. 

Now that I am "grown up" and I have become something, I think it's about time to become...someone. You get asked all the time what you want to be. It's as if what your profession has to define the kind of person you are. I want to people to want to know who I am instead of what. 

I'm pretty sure that this experience is helping me to find that out. I've been through a lot in my 19 (almost 20!) years and I'm only going to go through a whole lot more. It's hard to be away from my home. I feel like I'm missing out on so much and it's going to take a toll on me but I'm trying to take good things out of it and become a better person every day. 

And on a side note...there are only 19 days until I turn 20! 

Got My Heart A Racin'

First, I would like to apologize for my lack of posts. I'm so busy and the internet is about as fast as snail mail...It's quite frustrating. Don't be surprised if my posts aren't quite as pretty as usual. All the sites I use to format are too high-speed for the net connection here...so for a while, my posts might be lacking in the pizzazz department, but I'll do my best!

(Edit: I finally managed to make a little picture for this weekly post! Yay!)

As I mentioned last Monday, each week, I'll be sharing a few things about my basic training experience. Today, I've decided to share my favorite training events! We were lucky enough to have a Facebook page that had pictures and stuff so our families ( and now you!) can see what it was like. It's really cool.

Without further ado, I give you...

The Top 5 Best Training Events

5. Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM) and Advanced Rifle Marksmanship (ARM)

I didn't know how much I liked shooting until Basic. It was so fun. We ended up doing tons of shooting by the time we graduated and it was really cool to get some solid fundamentals of shooting. I think I will definitely keep up with it and work on it in the civilian world to qualify expert eventually!

4. Grenades

Have you even thrown a grenade? yeah...probably not. It's probably one of the most exciting things I've done so far. Pulling out all the safeties and chucking a little exploding ball out in front of you...it's kind of exhilarating! The boom shook my soul...It was...amazing!

3. The Final PFT 

That's our final fitness test. I was so motivated for this thing, I did so well! My first PT test I didn't do very well. I ran a 185 PFT...I didn't even pass everything! I couldn't believe it. So when it came time to do my final PFT I was really hoping to do well. I had worked hard on my own and wanted it to show. Well, it definitely showed! I ran 2 miles in 15 minutes and 7 seconds, I did 28 push-ups (over doubling my first score) and 69 push ups. I MAXED my run and did over 75 points in the other two events. I was so proud of it that the dang PFT became one of the high lights of my experience. 

2. Treadwell Tower 

Treadwell Tower is a rappelling training event with a rope course deally attached to it. When we came up on this tower...I wanted to pass out. It was our first actual day of training and I almost peed my pants at the top of the 40 foot tower and on the rope course that we did, but once I completed it, I felt so awesome and confident, which was probably the point. 

That picture is even me! Woo!

1. The 16k!

The 16k is often dreaded by young privates like myself, but I was so pumped for it. We ended up practically having to skip our final big training exercise because of lightening storms and a ridiculous down pour that happened that whole week, so we got a good night's rest before we headed out. I was so excited and proud to be so close to the finishing point of BCT that I barely even felt the pain. When we finished, I had big old blisters between my toes.  My wrist was sore and stiff from carrying my weapon, my back hurt from my ruck...it was painful, but I had no idea until we finished. It felt so good. 

Basically

Hello my dear friends!  I hope you're ready for the beginning of something great. Each Monday, I'll be posting for a new series I've decided to call "Basically" If I wrote all about it all in one post you would be bored to tears, so I'm going to do my best to break it up into the most exciting parts so that you can share in my experience.  I am also thinking about working up some "so you're going to BCT" stuff, but I don't know. We shall see how much time I've got.

Now, without further ado, I present Basically.

Top 5 Worst Things About Basic Training:

5)  Wind. 

 Being a plain, Oklahoma is pretty dang windy. It's possible that the wind did not stop blowing all 11 weeks I was on Fort Sill.  Standing in formation at 0400 with some serious wind chill was pure Hell. It was cold and it burned our faces. I either had windburn or sunburn the entire duration of basic. It was awful. No amount of warming layers or neck gaiters could make it better. 

4) Box Lunch.

Seriously....eff box lunch. They called them Jimmy Deans, but they were anything but. Basically a box lunch consisted of two cans of tuna salad, chicken salad, beef in BBQ, or chicken and noodles.  It had a juice box, a fiber bar, can of fruit, and bread that was nasty. Even worse? They gave them to us for dang breakfast! Yep! BREAKFAST!! It was terrible. It also meant that you'd be good an hungry until dinner chow because we'd have MREs for lunch... ick. Box lunch. 

3) Living with 59 females.

Is it necessary for me to explain this one? I think it speaks for its self. It is so hard to deal with so many women at one time. I didn't have much trouble getting a long with them, but I had my fair share of grudges, frustrations, irritations, etc. with many of them. The worst thing about it was how they all fought with each other. It made me want to say "Can't we all just get along?!" And be serious about it. 

2) Lugging around my M16...

Have you ever carried around nearly 8 lbs of something around for about 7 1/3 weeks? If you have, you get me. It blows. Even worse? Ever cycle after my class will be getting brand new M4s. I got to pick one of them up and pull the charging handle back and it was like a dream...I am so jealous. 

1) Hurry Up & Wait

This is truly the very worst thing about basic....You run everywhere. You are given 30 second to take everything out of your wall locker and take it down two flights of stairs. You're pushed onto and off of buses. You're told to be in formation at 05 when the drill sergeants don't come out until 0545. You wait and wait and wait on everyone and everything. Oh, and if you have to wait on your battle buddies, you get to do it in the front leaning rest while sounding off with "Hurry up! Waiting on you!" It's just great.

Sarcasm. 

Not great. 

  

I'm Back, Did You Miss Me?

HELLO! 

I am currently hanging out at the USO in the St. Louis Airport just waiting for my bus to arrive and I thought that I would stop in and say a thing or two before I head off to AIT and get too busy to blog about what's going on. 

First things first!

I had a giveaway going before I left that never got taken care of because I was gone. Don't worry, a winner will be picked and something will be sorted out, I promise!

Second of all. I missed my bliggity...so much. I missed all of my readers, I missed writing my witty little pieces, I missed tweeting and facebooking and all the annoying parts of bloggings all put together and I am so happy to be returning to this thing that I love so much.

I would also like to thank the awesome ladies that blogged for me while I was gone! I so appreciated them and their efforts to keep my blog from dying out. I was so worried, but I think that it was alright :) I could have asked for better bloggy friends. 

What I've decided to do with my basic training experiences, is tell you a little bit about them each week.  I suppose it will be a "Military Monday" sort of thing. Hopefully that works out as well as I think it will. 

But until then, I'll give you a few wonderful highlights. 

1) I reached one of my goals and I was promoted to Private First Class effective 12 April!  Only 18 out of 210 were promoted and I was one of them.  I am so proud of it and the extra money really doesn't make me sad at all. 

2) I was able to serve as a squad leader. It felt so good to be given some responsibility. I was more than happy to march at the front of the formation and do a few little things here and there to help out our Platoon guides. 

3) My entire family came to see me graduate! Including my wonderfully angelic niece. Meeting her for the first time was probably the best thing....ever!

And of course, there is so much more to tell and many exciting things that I got to experience. Overall, basic training was a fun and educational experience. I am really glad to be done and moving onto the next part of my training. I really hope that it's everything I hoped. 

Oh, side note! While I was in basic, my mom sent me my mail that was going to my home address. That meant that I found out I got into UNLV while I was laying on the floor in the squad bay going through my mail for that evening! So, it looks like I've got yet another great adventure ahead of me. More on that to come as well! 

I am also hoping to get a new design up and running here soon, but we'll have to see how much free time I have before that happens! I hope you are as excited as I am about what is to come!

Just checking in!

Well! I am all finished with basic training and I'll be onto my next adventure tomorrow at 0100 :P. I am excited to get back to my blog and get some good posts written for you all! I just thought I'd check in while I had a moment I hope you lovely readers didn't forget about me while I was away!

You'll see me posting again soon!

Whats On The Outside

Hey there everyone! Happy April Fools day! I bet I won't be playing any fun tricks on anyone though Instead I'll be marching and learning and growing into a cool soldier girl... Today for my While I'm away series, I have Chelsee from  Southern Beauty Guide 

Hi! My name is Chelsee and I am the creator of the blog entitled Southern Beauty Guide. I am so thankful to Katie for asking me to guest post today. First, I would like to tell you a little about myself. I am a twenty something southern belle blogging as I journey from a college graduate through the process of apply to law school and making my dreams come true. I am a firm believer that dreams do come true, and I am in the process of making my dreams happen.  At Southern Beauty Guide, one can find information about all things dealing with Beauty, and much more. My goal is to help everyone see the Beauty in themselves, while having a little fun playing with Beauty products. I provide my readers with at least one product review every week. I am a firm believer in giving an honest opinion about products. I personally hate spending money on products that are not worth the packaging that is covering them, so I try to save my readers the frustration that comes along with product letdowns. I am not affiliated with any company, so you can rest assure you will find real honest product reviews. Sticking with the topic of reviews, I would like to share with you today, my favorite product find of the month. 

I know most of you have heard of the brand called “Elf,” it is a cosmetics line commonly known as “Eyes Lips and Face” thus the term ELF. ELF products are super inexpensive and generally great products to purchase. They are low cost, most ranging from $1-$3 in cost. The only difficult part of this brand is finding them in stores. These products are not sold in most stores; however, you can purchase them through the ELF Website and in your local Target store. I tend to buy them directly through the ELF website, due to the wider variety of products offered online. The product I specifically would like to mention in this post is one that I randomly pickup during a haul. It is called “Eye Refresher,” I must admit in the beginning I was quite skeptical about that product. It retails at only $3, yet comes with a long line of promises. The online review rating was 3/5 starts, which was enough to make me a little iffy about this product. After readings some reviews I decided to pick it up anyways, I mean if the product ended up being a “miss,” then I would not be out much money. Well without further ado, here is my recent review on this product. 

E.l.f. Studio Eye Refresh: 

The cooling sensation of the Eye Refresh roller ball brightens and refreshes the eye area to help alleviate under eye puffiness and dark circles. Infused with key ingredients Pomegranate, Rosemary, Green Tea, Cucumber and Grape to hydrate and nourish the delicate skin around your eyes. Perfect for portable on-the-spot treatment to awaken the skin throughout the day for a little pick-me-up. Eye Refresh is great for men too!

How to apply: 

It is quick and easy to apply just roll the tip from the inner to the outer corner of the under eye area several times. You can apply this in the morning or at night. Elf even says that you can apply it over your makeup. 

The verdict: 

This product is Amazing! This quick and easy step can truly make a difference. Through a month of use, I have seen my dark circles lighten and my overall under eye area brighten. The best use of this product in my opinion has been mornings when I have puffy eyes. It seriously soothes my skin and has quickly been added to my must have list. For only $3 in my opinion, it is a huge deal. Please note these results will vary. I highly suggest you picking up this product next time you're shopping ELF. 

I hope you enjoyed this review, and thanks again to Katie for this guest post opportunity!

Want to see more from Chelsee?