This is so fun!!!

Thursday and Friday...
Due to my fever these two days, I wasn't able to attend my classes except for PE class because we're having a quiz and a fitness test. Luckily, the quiz was easy :D

Saturday...
Today, we will be having gun firing in military training for our final exam. At first, I can't decide whether to attend or not because I've just recovered from the fever and heavy training and severe exposure to the sunlight might worsen my condition. If I didn't go, I'd surely get a failure grade for not attending the exam. Finally, after a long time of thinking, I decided to go.

Well, my decision turned out to be right. We assembled in the university campus on 6:30am and due to some delays, we departed at approximately 7:45am. That was almost 2 hours of waiting inside the non-airconditioned bus. After about 20 min. of bus ride, we arrived at the Fort Bonifacio Marine Camp. This is where the camp of the Philippine Marine Corps live and train.

Some battling demonstrations were shown to us. It was all nice, but the one thing I felt excited and nervous about is the gun firing/ familiarization firing. We were permitted to tour around the marine vehicles. The problem is, we were to right a reflection paper after our visit in the camp :(
After that, we went to a lecture room to watch some marine videos showing us information about the Philippine Marine and its achievements.

After the movie presentation, we went to have lunch. Then finally, the moment that we've all longed for has arrived--GUN FIRING. After some brief instructions regarding the precautions and proper usage of the rifle, we were to start the first round firing. All of us positioned and START! The 1st round was a trial round with 3 shots. I was really nervous. When I fired my first shot on the target, I almost went deaf and the recoil of the gun was quite a big impact to my shoulders. The sound of the gun was so loud that it temporarily "paralyzed" my ear. Ignoring that, I continued and delivered my 2 other shots. Then we were asked to check the target and luckily, I got 2 out of 3 shots in the circle, but not the bulls-eye :(

Now, after the 3 trial shots is our 7 final shots. I positioned myself on the ground again, then aimed on the target and fired. Because almost all of us fired at the same time, my vision was blurred by the noice and smoke. Without any choice, I focused and tried to shoot again. After some struggles, I finally managed to shoot out. The shooting continued until all the 7 shots were used up. Putting down the m-16 rifle, we went to look get our target paper. On my target paper, I had 5 shots on it, and the other 5 shots are nowhere to be found LOL All in all, I only got 2 shots out of 10 in the circle and the other three outside the circle, while 6 of my fellow cadets( 3 females and 3 males) were able to hit the bulls-eye and earn incentives :(

I guess my vision has a great effect. My left eye is 200 and right eye is 100. Oh well, at least I got to experience the fun and excitement. The squad officer told us that as long as we have a shot in the target cirlce, we could get a passing grade, so I'm satisfied with my performance. After waiting for my other fellow cadets to finish their turn of firing, we headed back to the bus and rode back to the university campus.

This day is the best training day I've had so far since the opening of school. But after 2 long hours, my left ear had still not recovered from the previous "shock" caused by the rifle. Besides that, everything went well. No accidents happened. I was glad that everyone followed instructions carefully :D

I figured out that shooting is addictive. Shooting once makes me wish for more. I hope I'd have another chance to shoot again, but hopefully, using a different rifle model.

Today was a tiring day and I'm glad that my health was able to sustain the heat of the sun and the coolness of the rain afterwards.

Next time...next time...I want to try again!!!

P.S. We were permitted to keep the empty bullet shells of our amunition. WOW! A once in a lifetime remembrance :D