Update on Nick
A lot has happened since the last time I posted about Nick. I'm getting two or three letters a week from him. Just like when he was on his mission, I walk down to the mail box every day and hope there is a letter. He has passed one of four phases without rolling (being held back)! Each phase is about four weeks long. I'm so happy that he's past phase one, because it's the hardest. Now he can call me on the weekends for about 30 minutes. Last weekend was the first time we got to talk since that two minute phone call his first week. Here are some of the things he has told me about OCS:
-Every morning they are out on the field doing drills (marching with rifles). They have to do it PERFECTLY, or they are punished with insane amounts of running, pushups, and other exercises. He said even if they do it right, the drill instructors find something wrong and make them run until they want to die. He said he's lost count of how many times he's thrown up. The drill instructors are not allowed to work them like that for more than ten minutes at a time, or more than once an hour. One day they did it for ten minutes every hour on the hour. He said there has been so many times that he didn't think he could keep going, but then he would think about being rolled back three weeks, and being away from me and Danny that much longer, and it would always get him through. I'm so proud of him for making it through that!
-They are starving all the time. They get three meals a day, but meals only last for 20 minutes, and they have to take so many steps just to take one bite, that they never get full. They have to do all the steps together with out messing up too. If they do mess up, they do push ups instead of taking a bite : (. Most of you know how skinny Nick is, so this can't be good. He said he was getting skinnier, but now that phase one is over he can eat more.
-They only get about 4 hours of sleep each night. He said someone always has a cold and it gets passed around like crazy. The only time they can write to family is at night, so they have to give up part of that four hours if they want to to do that.
-One day they made them do their exercises in a sand pit while being sprayed with a hose. At the end they made them roll around in it until every inch of them was covered in sand. THEN they had to go in their rooms and mess up their bed, and then make it back up perfectly over and over and OVER. The drill instructors are yelling in their face the whole time too of course. Sand was all over the place and they had room inspections the next morning. Nick said most of them didn't go to bed that night because they had to have their rooms perfect the next morning (even under-ware ironed and folded). They don't have vacuums, so I have no idea how they were able to get the sand out. A lot of kids get rolled after room inspections, so it's pretty scary.
Thank GOODNESS that part is over. He's starting classes now, but much of their day will still be outside running their guts out. On Wednesday they had drill competition. His drill instructor said that if they did bad, he would personally see to it that the rest of OCS was a miserable experience. I'm anxious to hear how it went!
Sunday will be week 5 out of 12 for him. Danny and I will be flying down for graduation on November 18th. Nick's parents are coming too which I am REALLY happy about. It will mean so much to Nick to have all of us there. I've never flown with Danny so I'm glad I won't be a lone.
I feel like I'm leaving a lot out, but hopefully I gave you a good update : ). 5 weeks down, 7 more to go!
