This year has been hectic so far. Not only am I now an MSIII in the Army ROTC program here at ERAU, I am taking some difficult classes and trying to adjust living in a new apartment with two of my friends. I feel though that despite the heavy workload, jam-packed schedule and copious amounts of reading I have to do, this year will get even tougher. So far the other Army cadets and I have been placed in charge of leading Eagle Company under the supervision of our cadre and MSIV’s. So far I have been the platoon sergeant and squad leader but my toughest role is going to surface when the most difficult part of our semester rolls around, the Fall FTX. I’m a bit anxious for that but I hope it will be alright.

Classes so far are great, I am taking History of Terrorism (been looking forward to this since freshman orientation), Studies in Global Intelligence I, Information Protection and Computer Security and some more classes. They are all interesting and I can’t wait to take my Counterintelligence course next year! Because this year has been so jam packed I haven’t had much time to do many social activities. My friend Angelo and I managed to take a break in our schedules and visited our friend Anna and the notorious Liesl Hall in their volleyball game last week. Our team did a good job and it was inspiring to see all the freshman taking in interest in the many extracurricular activities we have offered here at ERAU. Last week we held our Activities Expo or whatever they called it when all the clubs and organizations presented booths to attract new members. I found myself convinced into signing up for several groups but I don’t think I can make them fit into my schedule just yet!

Last week all the MSIII’s and the Ranger Challenge cadets (I’ll post about this soon) went to Fort Navajo up by Flagstaff to conduct the Eagle Raider FTX to prepare us for Warrior Forge 2012 in which we will be attending LDAC. Several important informative classes were taught to us by the MSIV’s and we got to go on the Night LandNav course and to the firing range the next morning. I admit I need some practice with both but I plan on improving myself over the course of the semester in both categories. Well, this has been the start of the Fall Semester, hopefully the level of difficulty peaks soon so we can roll downhill to easy street……(This is ERAU, never gonna happen, but it can’t hurt to hope right?)

About to learn how to apply camouflage

Cadet Salas on the Firing Range

“Stress + chess = chress” says my roommate Joshua Ann Dray. For the last two weeks we have been studying like no other and devoting time to our studies because that is our job.        Lame.  I hate studying, its a common feeling and we all know it!  We found a way to divert our stress into a game that has been played for hundreds of years, CHESS! I was one of the chess nerds that was on the chess team in middle school and you know what, those Tuesday afternoons with a bunch of super-smart kids in a swamp-cooler room made it worth it because I tell you, beating people from France on online chess during Finals week (as nerdy as that sounds) is a great way of releasing much needed endorphins. I mean sure, endorphins result from binge eating of chocolate, Oreos, mounds of goldfish, killing Nazi zombies and yes, chess. As good as playing chess has been, it’s getting bad in Room 113. We must have thrown away hours of study time just to play people online and of course those wretched computers. Computers should not know how to play, they are so demoralizing because they know Every move!  Computers are cocky and are cold machines that have wasted our time! My own laptop mocks me as I write this so time to transition to a new topic.

Time for the stress part of chress. I still have four finals left, Personality and Profiling on Monday, Humanities on Tuesday, Social Psychology on Wednesday and U.S. Foreign Policy. Ughhh I have a lot to do so I better abandon the chess-filled fun of my room and head to that cursed library which is about to explode because so many people are crowded in there!

>Chess has taken Joshua over to the dark side

So for Easter Break I went back home to Tucson with my friends Joe and Josh so that we could spend some time with my family and most importantly, so that they could experience Eegee’s. Unfortunately only a few people here at Riddle know what Eegee’s is and they are all from Tucson except our very own beloved Queen of Blogging Liesl Angelique Hall, and Tucsonans Daria and the vindictive soccer girl Whitney. April’s flavor of the month was Orange Dream and I usually am not a fan but this year it was better than I remember it. It was kind of strange seeing my school friends in a place that I have grown up around but it was cool at the same time. We just got to spend time around the house and then came back here to continue our studies. Studying ruins everything!!! Next year is going to be worse though so I guess I shouldn’t complain now. Oh well, Good Luck everybody!

I hope they liked it

Military Ball:

Last night on the 8th the Eagle Company of Army ROTC here at ERAU held its Military Ball at some Prescott casino. We had been hearing about this Ball coming up for awhile so our Company Commander Cadet Welch had to get lots of information out to us and pretty much had to organize the whole thing so that it would be a success, which it was. I asked my friends Lindsey and Rachel from ASU to come up and accompany me and my roommate Joshua to the ball and we all went together. The girls came here and we all got dressed up ready to go (I had previously had a minor crisis in finding a proper black jacket to go with my getup and thanks to my friend Jake I managed to find one and not appear like a fool) and we drove there in Joshua’s truck. The first few minutes were strange because I had never seen so many girls in the same place in Prescott (they were all dressed up too so it made it easier to identify them as girls). We got in line and mingled a bit and it was fun introducing Rachel and Lindsey to all my Army friends here. They even got to meet some of the cadre and I’ll admit that was a bit strange because I never imagined friends from back home crossing paths with someone as influential as the cadre.

By some act of God the four of us got seated together with possible the best table there and the ceremony started. Dinner eventually came along and the entire time I was just talking to two of the most favored MS-IVs and joking around with everyone as we ate our steak and salmon. Salmon was delicious, I ate fish because it was a Friday during Lent and it was not some cheap salmon that casinos serve, it was actually very good. The raspberry tart thing they gave us for dessert was amazing, here’s a picture of it, all the desserts were amazing as they were possibly the most important part of the evening! Dinner concluded and then dancing started for everyone because after all it was a ball. I’m not the best dancer and of course didn’t spend too much time on the dance floor. We went back after that and some of my roommates wanted to watch some movie. I figured that was too boring so I decided to take the girls over to our other friends’ room where we had a few exciting expeditions during the night. We played indoor Capture the Flag, went on an ice cream run, watched Night and Day and had some more mini-adventures while it snowed outside.

SNOW

Great, now we have a PT test on Monday and it is going to be freezing!! The girls left this morning and I went out to buy a bunch of stuff in preparation for Mark’s wedding in a month. There is still snow everywhere and the JFTX is coming up but at least we’ll be in Fort Huachuca this time instead of the frozen tundra known as Fort Navajo in Flagstaff.

Some pictures from the Military Ball: