BOLC II

I started my training June 9th and now have 3 of 7 weeks complete. The first class I am taking is the Basic Officer Leader Course II, or BOLC II. Since I am brand new to the Army, I have learned quite a bit in the first few weeks. I qualified with my M4 carbine rifle the first time I tried this last week after only a few hours a prior practice. I didn't get a great score but since I passed my first try I was pretty happy. I could have tried to get a better score for fun but it was about 97 degrees outside and my safety glasses had sweat running down them making them blurry, while my eyes were burning at the same time. That was a fun day except it was miserable at the same time.
The first week of the class was all in processing (getting all my information into the Army system) so I will get paid and all my personnel information is correct. I will not get paid by the Army until July 1st (hopefully). And even then, my pay rate will be wrong because as of a few days ago I should be a 1st Lt.
The second week we did combatives, which really means wrestling moves. When I take more advanced courses, like the one that starts in August, they will teach us how fight standing up more so than just from positions on the ground. It was fun since I have never learned standard wrestling moves or even wrestled. Since I have bony knees, they got bruised up and were pretty sore for a few days.
The third week we practiced marksmanship and then qualified with out rifle on a big shooting range. The ear plugs they gave us worked very well, so I was thankful for that. The only thing that is not so fun about training is that for every good hour I get instruction or practice shooting or something of that nature there is a bout four hours of sitting and waiting for the NCOs to come tell us what to do. The communication flow is not very well organized and thus we end up sitting around waiting for people and/or waisting vast amounts of time that would be appalling in the private sector workplace. We also got to do a night fire on the same range, where we had to get up before 3 AM, but we got to use our night vision goggles, which helped us get used to them since we will use those all the time in various situations.
Next week we will be practicing urban operations and short range marksmanship.
Christina and I have been able to spend the last couple weekends together thankfully. Last weekend for my birthday, we went to Atlanta and walked around the Georgia aquarium, which was cool except there were so many people there. We walked around town for a while and went to random places and then came back here. This weekend we stayed around here, which was nice, even though it rained a lot yesterday, and is going to rain today as well. Next weekend for 4th of July, I am going down to Panama City to stay with Christina for the weekend.