Kilo Kings

I have a few spare minutes today so I'll try to add some details to what I've done so far.

[Just to clarify- my flight, which is Kilo flight, is the group of 14 people I spend almost all my time with. We all stay on the same hall in the dorms and eat, sleep, study, and work out together. And I really lucked out because rumor has it, a lot of the other flights don't get along so well. Other people are asking what our secret is. Unfortunately, you can't learn awesome, you just have to have it.]

A few things I've learned about myself- 1)Four hours of sleep is plenty to get through a 16 hour day. 2)Running three miles before six a.m. isn't always a bad thing. Unless it's day three of said running in which case leg muscles no longer respond to command. 3)Salad at every meal sounds like a good idea but is really only a good thing for about a week. 4)I am capable of so much more than I ever would have imagined!

With the help of my flight mates I made it through the obstacle course, sprinted, ran, and push-uped my way through PT, and am making some really great friends along the way. This has been the most fun I've ever had despite the exhaustion and stress. I did, however, finally get singled out the other day for being out of regulation for my hair and it was the final straw on this camel's back. Yes, ladies and gentlemen after three weeks I finally cried. I recovered, however, in just a few minutes and have been happy as a clam ever since.

Allow me to paint you a picture:
I'm on my way to class and a few of us decide to go through the BOT section- basic officer trainees. They're the ones actually get yelled at all the time and having to do pushups for blinking. Their training is far more like actual boot-camp than mine. Needless to say, their instructors are infintely more angry than the ones I deal with.
So I'm cruising through the BOT hall on the way to class and I hear "Lieutenant...LIEUTENANT." And I think to myself "we're all lieutenants... so..." But then out of the corner of my eye I see an evil little woman looking at me and she says "lieutenant are you familiar with the Air Force policy on hair regulations?" and I say "yes ma'am." so she asks what they are and I rattle them off and she says "and..." well, i've already listed them off so I look a little left trying to think about it and that of course is not allowed at the position of attention so she barks at me about that. Finally, she tells me that my ponytail is not allowed to be hanging free because it counts as loose ends and according to AFI-36-2903 no loose ends are allowed. [Which by the way, is COMPLETELY wrong according to footnote number 8 in said AFI manual.] However, I didn't know the page number at the time so I said "yes ma'am" and turned to go to class. Which of course was improper because I should have said "will that be all ma'am" waited for her to say yes and then ended with "good morning ma'am" so I got barked at for that as well. Awesome.
So I finally head off to class. CRAZY ANGRY because I got called out for something that I wasn't in the wrong for and I'm standing by my seat waiting for class to start, gritting my teeth and trying not to cry (keep in mind I've been running on about 5 hours of sleep per night for 3 weeks and have academics and general stress tiring me out) and my flight-mate sticks his arm out and pats me on the back and says "it'll be ok." at this point my composure is still somewhat maintained. But then this other guy turns around and says "don't worry about it. we're outta here in two weeks." At which point I crack. Long story short, I hurry off to the bathroom, gather myself together, and continue on with my day...
Wow, that was long! But all details were necessary. Other than that, I personally have not been yelled at for anything. And just as a general comment of the team work and awesomeness of everyone here- a couple days later a guy in my class, but not my flight, sees me in the chow hall and comes up to me and asks if I'm ok. He says he wanted to check on me because he saw that I was upset the other day and wanted to know if I needed help with anything. Personally, I thought it was really nice of him.

*I apologize in advance for all grammatical errors as I was trying to get this done in time for lunch.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for...PICTURES! These are just some that I have on my camera. One of my flight mates made a slide show with a bunch of really good ones but he has them on his computer/camera so that will come at a later date.


This is at the air show Saturday. The weather turned out perfectly!


Air Show- these are some of my flight mates. They didn't all come out at once.


I got my first military discount this day too. One of the planes that you could go in asked for a $1 donation and when I went to pay the guy said "you don't have to pay- you're active duty. Thank you for your service." I was so excited!


The girl on the far right is my roommate. The one in the middle is in the room across the hall from me. And on the left is me of course.


This is at the pizza social we had. Just hangin' in the kitchen. We had to wear those white plastic name tags until everyone got nametapes sewn on...which was until this week.


This is my whole flight posing with the chalice we won for being honor flight of the week.


This is the flight room where we have a lot of our classes. We're either here or in one of two auditoriums most of the time. Can you see how thrilled I am?


And definitely not at all tired. The guy in the back is building a tower out of our flashlights. We like to be as productive as possible with our free time.


View of the campus from my dorm window. Thank goodness I'm on the bottom floor. We have to use the stairs so the third floor would have been awful.


My dorm room. My bed/desk/whole set up is the one closest to the window.










Studying the constitution. It's how I spend my free time of course. This picture definitely was not posed and it didn't take ten tries to get it right...


The campus again, just a different angle.



More to come later!!