Winding down.....for the evening.  I'm sorry there hasn't been many posts lately, but believe me, I have plenty of pictures to put up to describe everything once I actually have some time in the evening!

This week has consisted of going to the shooting range every day but Wednesday (4th of July).  We had classroom exercises and some virtual shooting exercises that we participated in instead.  More on the classroom stuff later.

The range has been pretty good.  We have become very proficient in shooting both the m9 and the m4, with the focus mainly on the m4 (which is the larger weapon).  In the picture below, I'm wearing everything that we wear when we're shooting.  It's called our "battle rattle".  The helmet is made of Kevlar, and weighs approximately 8 pounds, the vest has ceramic plates in the front, back, and sides, as well as soft ballistic gel all throughout to protect us from any shrapnel that might occur from an attack of any sorts.  We're told it weighs around 30 pounds, but I swear at the end of the day it feels like 50 when you're lugging it back to the barracks.  The knee pads and elbow pads are really just more of an inconvenience than anything else, and the gloves are hot but protect your hands pretty darn well. The weapons add about another 10 pounds.....so you can imagine it gets pretty dang hot all dressed up in it when it's over 100 degrees every day.  It is easier to move in than older models of the equipment, but it's definitely still a challenge!  The sunglasses are just to make me look cool......and I guess they kind of protect my eyes too :)

I was all dressed up to go outside and practice this.....

Which is one of the five positions we have to shoot from with all of this gear on.  The item you see on top on our backs is our handy dandy camelback- which I really do love.  

This day started out like this.....

Which is us being instructed on the different procedures at the firing range, and also practicing the different positions.  I'm pretty sure we were dealing with the m9's at this point.  I would personally find it incredibly entertaining to walk by as we're practicing this in a large group, because we all face the wall and have to say bang as though we were pulling the trigger.  Just saying, I think it would be funny.

This picture is some of our corpsman all dressed up for practicing our firing positions together.  Unfortunately, the corpsman on the very left had to go home due to some heat injuries and we definitely miss her.  She was awesome!!

Now onto some awesome female motivational pictures...

You know, it's just some nurses and corpsmen out for an evening patrolling stroll around the base.  Pretty normal stuff around here....I suppose!  We definitely got some funny looks when I challenged everybody to a short quarter mile run, but everybody participated and were smiling afterwards!  I think mostly they were smiling because I did 10 burpees with all this junk on just to see 1. if I could do it and 2. to make them laugh because I'm sure it looked ridiculous!  Here's me after the burpees

See?  Still smiling :)  Yes we were all drenched afterwards, but it really was fun in a military training kind of way.  A bonding experience of sorts if you will.

This is what it looks like in the mornings as we form up and then "ground" our weapons and gear to go eat chow.  I guess they were bad or something....no silly, that's not what it means!  It means that we have at least one person babysitting all of our weapons so that we don't have to carry them with us to chow, which makes things so much easier!  It means no bumping into other people or catching rifle barrels on one another- which surprisingly doesn't happen as often as you think.  

This is what is looks like if you peer down the ranks before we had a short motivational hike

The after picture wasn't so pretty so we'll refrain from sharing that.  The drill sergeants had a cadence for us and the speed was fairly quick- which unfortunately left half of the platoon in the dust!  Needless to say, it's now too hot too early on to really march anywhere, and most of the places we go to are too far to where we would be late constantly.

That's the update for now....I'll put up tons more pictures later on!  For now, I'm grateful to have working air conditioning again and a soft place to rest my head :)