Week Two (Yay, we're moving on)

So we ended off last week with church, and a security violation... on the same day. Now, lets move onto week two!

We started off with some integrated defense. Integrated defense is when we started taking advantage of our M16 trainer weapons and learned how to use them in combat! We went outside with our M16's and learned how to roll around in the sand, run and fall with our M16's, crawl through dirt, it was fun! We got extremely dirty and looked pretty rugged at the end of the training. I went through 2 canteens in 15 minutes, but it's all good. It was the most fun I had at BMT thus far.

After we did our I.D. training, we went inside and learned how to take apart and put back together our M16's. The official rule is that you have to take apart and put back together the m16 in no more than 4 minutes (2 to take apart, 2 to put back together) with 3 instructor assists. Lets just say... I could take apart and put back together my M16 in 1:26. Yup. That's taking apart AND putting back together all at once. Sweetness.

Around week 2 is when the trainees start to barely impress their TI's. We're starting to figure out what our roles are and how to get things down right the 1st time. In my paper journal I kept during BMT, it says, "Finally impressed TI", but I have no idea what we did to impress them. I guess it was significant, but not enough for me to remember what it was XD.

We started our career guidance. What this means is we go the processing building, and we are given a "dream sheet". We put out top 10 bases we wish to be stationed at on this piece of paper, allowing for the fact that you have 10 bases to choose from. A lot of the jobs had a lot of different bases you could choose from. But me... I had ONE BASE, and that's Creech AFB (right outside Las Vegas). So I didn't really have much choice in the matter. So I checked Creech AFB haha.

At this point in our training we started to notice that the TI spends more personal time with the flight. During Airmen's time, we all gather in a room and the TI sits in a chair and starts talking about morals and ethics of being an Airman. At the end of the ethics talk, we still have an hour to waste. So the TI kicks up his feet and says, "So... what do you want to bullsh** about?" And we just start talking about random stuff.

People kept sending letters to my old flight address, so one day during this week, I was called down to CQ. I was freaking out because you get called down to CQ when you get in trouble. I went down to CQ as quickly as my marching legs would carry me, went into CQ, and saw my old instructor. They asked me, "What do you want?!" I told them, "(reporting statement), Sir, I was called down to CQ and now I'm here... sir." They handed me some letters that had arrived to the old address and told me to go away. I was so relieved that I wasn't in trouble. I came back up to the room and my friends asked me, "What happened?!?! You in trouble??!!?!" When I told them that it was only for letters, they gave me a disappointed look and walked away. They wanted an epic story. Oh well.

We had PT evals during that week. I did much better than my first eval, considering we work our butts off every single day. Yay!

We did Integrated Defense Level 2. This was fun. We learned how to defend the base from freakin' intruders! We sit on our knees at an entry point and scream "HALT!!!!" while pointing an M16 at the intruder. We do a lot more dialog. "WHO GOES THERE?!" We usually get a smart@$$ response. "Your mom." We tell them to advance, put their weapon on the floor, lay down on the floor, etc. It's fun to finally be able to tell somebody what to do while aiming a weapon of mass destruction at them.

We started classes on AF History, Ethics, Human Relations, and other stuff. Class days were always fun because we spent a lot less time around our TI's. While in class, you are usually being taught by some really awesome TI who likes to have fun with you. I'll share with you an experience I had with a classroom TI in my 7th week when I get around to writing that blog. Hehe.

We had our second wall locker inspections. When we get inspected, we have to stand in front of our lockers in the position of attention while we witness the other trainees get their hinds handed to them for having crappy lockers. It was definitely not fun, because when it's finally your time to get inspected, you know death is coming. I passed my bed and personal area inspection, my security drawer and clothes drawer, but failed my locker (where my ABU's and PT clothes are). I didn't clip all my strings off my uniform. Ack.

One day, while in the dining facility, I was eating my food. Duh. Some of the flight was still getting their food and sitting down. One of the section supervisors pulled aside one of the trainees who had just gotten their food and sat down. The Section Sup said, "Hey, point out your instructor and call his name." Our instructor was all the way on the other side of the dining facility. The trainee pointed his finger at the instructor, and yelled "Technical Sergeant Adams!" The instructor quickly got PISSED and ran over to the trainee and yelled at him, telling him that pointing is rude! Soon after this happened, the Section Sup pulled over ANOTHER trainee to do the same thing. Pointed at the instructor, "Technical Sergeant Adams!" The instructor says, "Holy piss!!!" and tells him that pointing is freaking rude! It was so hilarious to watch.

On the 30th of July, I had to wake up at freaking 2:30AM for no reason... a lot of our flight had Kitchen Patrol, and they had to wake up super early. So the rest of our flight had to wake up with them. And then we had to stay awake for 4 more hours, waiting for us to start the day. Me and 4 others had to march to the Gas Chambers to help with that. We got to help the other instructors with the gas chambers. Basically cleaning things, yelling at the trainees as they came out of the chambers, telling them where to go. It was fun. The instructor that we helped told us that we would not remember him. He lied, I remember him, and he was awesome :D.

We got to watch Parade Practice for the first time. It was an extreme amount of motivation to watch 7th and 8th weekers practice for the final parade. :)

We learned how to do the marching move called "To the Rear"... when that command is called, the entire formation spins around and starts marching the opposite direction. It was kinda cool, but hard to master.

The people who failed their inspections had to get re-inspected a few days later. But this time, we had a section supervisor in the room. During the week, our dorm chief keeps a log of the trainees who do good and do bad. The section supervisor called up the trainees who had bad reports in the logs. The section supervisor fake-recycled a trainee for peeing in the shower. The trainee left the flight for 2 days and was allowed to rejoin the flight. The ultimate scare tactic.

That night, our dorm was super loud and happy. The CQ box clicked on to listen to our room to see if we were behaving. 5 minutes later, the CQ intercom came on. "I just called your TI to tell him that your dorm is being way too loud and laughing and crap." Not good. We got quiet and behaved for the rest of the night.

This was the first Sunday that we didn't have a TI for the first part of the morning. We went to church, listened to some amazing songs that made me cry, sang to worship, had a Captain preach to us, and then we went back to the dorm.

We ran out of toilet paper so we had to use tissue paper that we bought at the mini-mall. Thought I should point that out.

The female TI came in and completely LOST it because of the incident that happened last night. She made us get on our faces, do all sorts of odd exercises while chanting, "We like being loud in the dorm at night..." and she made us repeat that a billion times while doing PT. She finally told us to stop after 10 minutes of nonstop PT, and told us to start behaving in a very harsh way. It sucked so bad.

After all that fun, we had a drill-expert TI come up to the dorm and taught us Counter March. This is not a BMT requirement marching technique, and only a few flights are taught this march. I know this because after I graduated, I asked many Airmen if they learned Counter March... and none of them knew what Counter March was.

Anyways, Counter March is like making a big U-Turn. The front of the flight kinda turns in on itself and completely turns around inside its own formation. It looks extremely cool, and it's a fast way to turn around without having to do 2 left movements and 1 right movement. Yay!

That about wraps up 2nd week. Cya next time!