Greetings from Rhode Island

Its neither a road nor and island...

I haven't been able to post recently because we are just going going going all the time. We wake up at 0400 everyday (that's 4am for you civilians). Then we go out in the cold and march to the gym to do PT for an hour and a half. Then we double time to Chow. After Chow we have 5 Min to "Brush our fangs, water, de-water, and be back on the line". After that we march or have a class. then Chow. Then all afternoon we have classes, which is the time they use to tear apart our rooms so we have to re-make everything. Then we get yelled at some more, do push ups when we are in trouble. then we go to chow. Then we have one more company meeting followed by ironing, polishing, and washing our clothes. In bed by 2200 (or 10:00) in order to do it all again tomorrow!

Our "drill instructor" is Senior Chief Berkel. He is an amazing man. Very passionate about his job and making staff officers into great Naval Officers. You can tell that he loves his job and the ability to do it. He gives us motivational speeches that are better than Hoosiers. He has seen it all and loves both the Navy and the traditions and Deference of the Navy. He knows how he can best teach all of us, but above all doesn't lower his standard, we just have to meet it. And he knows how to tell us about it. Through a mix of YELLING (WAY TO GO ROCKSTARS, I HAVE A COMPANY WITH PHD's OUT THE YING YANG AND YOU CANT GET YOUR SHIRT STRAIGHT!*%!&%) and sarcasm (your OTHER left SIR.....) he is molding us into a team and into officers. He is a really good guy.

I am learning a ton of lessons about discipline and integrity and Gods calling. But I thought Id share a little story and save those lessons for later...

This is a story that will show you how Senior Chief was before he showed us his nicer side... The one thing, above all else, that we must do is to lock our locker whenever we aren't an arms length away from it. At this point (this was Monday) someone had already left their lock off twice. This made the Senior Chief very unhappy. This was the third time and we walked in from class and knew that we were in trouble... Our gear was all over the hallway and everything had been torn apart. SC was already yelling and he screamed at us to take our raincoats off. After our third time with the jackets he put us up against the wall to do wall sits. We then did three part push ups and jumping jacks in uniform while SC berated us. SC then held us in the down position (you're not allowed to touch the ground) and proceeded to throw a lock down the passageway and slide it in front of us.

All of our hearts sank. I really think it was like when Christ told the disciples that one of them would betray Him, and they must have been shaking inside wondering who it was... All of us were wondering if we were the ones who had forgotten to lock our locker...

He then pulled up our money officer (whose lock it was) and threw all of our chow money for the week ($2024 which was her responsibility to keep for our meals, and was in her locker) on the floor. She started crying when he started yelling about how she betrayed the rest of the team by allowing our money to be out for the world to take. We all felt awful for her. She was then relieved of that duty and we had to wall sit until every last cent was counted. It was quite the experience.

Senior has an extra level of volume when we get in trouble like that, its pretty impressive.

Well, greetings from Naval Station Newport! Ill post again when I can. And I will post pictures soon!

Praise God.