I mentioned that today was our hell day in military training. I arrived at the university football field at 5:35, with the sun still hidden beneath the dark rain clouds. With the damp air smelling of rain from the night whistling across my face...I felt as if something bad will happen today. I don't know what is waiting for me ahead. I have imagined myself in the worst situations. I even drained by brain coming up with all kinds of harsh exercises that the officer would make us do.
After 5 mins of sitting on the stone chairs beside the football field "dreaming,"our batch representative called our attention and ordered us to form and squat. We were ordered to squat first thing in the morning, oh my God. I haven't quite waken up from sleep, my eyelids are still heavy from lack of sleep. Is it me who's the one too punctual, or is it the other cadets that are too late? I was one of the few who arrived either earlier or on time. 10 mins later, some more cadets arrived, too bad they were already late, so they were punished. Punishments include doing push-ups, squat rush, pumpings, and jumping jacks.
In another 10 mins or so, our officer came and commanded us to take out the charcoal we brought and to my astonishment, rub it on our arms and faces. Gosh, we were only given only 5 mins time, I didn't even have the time to complain. All I can do is to crush these charcoal and start rubbing the powder on myself. In just a matter of few minutes, our originally clean faces turned into faces like apes that escaped from the forest. Oh well, guess there's nothing I can do but to follow instructions.
Our warm-up exercise started with 30 jumping jacks, 30 pumpings, 30 squat rush, and 30 push-ups, which are 3 times of everything we do on training normally. Whew, very tiring. Later, when we were asked to form in the football field, we were made to do some more exercises ( the usual ones). After making us run 2 laps, we were ordered to lie on our backs, then stand on our feet, and lie on our bellies continuously for 10 repetitions. Well, that was emm...kinda fun, we're like kids playing on the mud. After that, was crawling and rolling across the field. Any exercise is alright with me, but after we're done, all of us were like apes coming out from the sewages. We smell like the grass, with an additional odor of stagnant water because the grasses on the field were still wet from the rain last night. My shirt and trousers are all wet with grasses sticking out my hair, my arms, and face.
After another 2 laps, there are many more exercises that we did, which I'm not going to mention anymore. At approximately 9:00, we proceeded to the lecture room and had our military lecture on naval terms and parts of a ship. The officer gave us a short quiz afterwards and we're off to go, and back to the fields. Exercises we're again, done and at 12:15, we were finally able to rest a bit while our batch representative and marchers prepare for our BODDLE FIGHT. In case you wonder what a boodle fight is, I'm gonna explain it here, don't worry :P A boodle fight is when we put food on top of banana leaves and all of us should finish the food together using our hands in a limited period of time. The food was nothing special --- sardines and rice :S It looks a lot like cat food :D After that was our "dessert" time (ewww the worst nightmare) Why? Because we were given ONE chocolate coated cookie, and were ordered to eat up the cookie by passing it around the platoon and eating up a bit of it at a time. The first round was only to eat up the chocolate coating, then the second round, the cookie. All the girls were like "YUCK! I can't take this anymore!" We'd rather do push-ups than eat up each other's saliva. After the cookie was a bottle of juice, drinking it with the same procedure with the chocolate cookie :S So many people were looking and laughing at us, including the new recruits of our unit. *sigh* What a "heroic" sacrifice...LOL
Finally, we're dismissed! Wohoo! Guess what? I survived, without fainting or even the least bit of bad feeling. Everything went well, and I didn't expect it to be that "fun." Everything was fun, except the disgusting cookie-and-juice part. Well, I sure am glad that this day has finally arrived and left. Enduring the hell day is like enduring the hardest part of the training. Now, we're officially welcomed to the model battalion and were promoted to midshipmen/women second class, and we're to roll up our sleeves the next time we have our training. YEY!!! It didn't turn out that bad, at least as bad as I imagined. Luckily, no one in our platoon fainted or fell, all of us won this battle together. Through this, I realized how important unity and cooperation are. Without them, we wouldn't have this far today.
Now this is what I call a LONG post, considering that there are still details that I did not mention. Well, I got to go sleep now. I know that its still very very early ( 16:00), I am too tired now to stay in front of the monitor without constantly dozing off ( like Nikko). Since when have I developed this bad habit? *sigh* Uh oh...my brain is not working anymore, and I feel dizzy. Bye bye I guess. Hope you enjoy this post, I know its not very entertaining. I would really appreciate if you took time to read it. Thanks!
