Embry-Riddle has been bustling with activity since I got back from Spring Break, which will have its own blog soon, and I have never been this busy! Analysis reports, personality profiles of spies and social psychological case studies have me running all over the place trying to complete all this work before the Army commitments take me over. On that note, The Army has been demanding a lot of the cadets lately in preparation for the Spring 2011 JTFX (Joint Field Training Exercise). For those that don’t know, every school in Arizona sends its ROTC units to work together during this JFTX which lasts a few days at some base of military operations. This year it is taking place at Ft. Hauchuca in Cochise Country near Tucson! Last years JFTX was at Ft. Navajo and we all froze the entire time! The unit here can only take a few MSII’s, sophomore cadets, due to lack of space. I fortunately was one of the ones that is assigned to go in my class although this means that a lot of work and commitment is required even of us sophomores in order to make this learning experience worth our time and worth the Army’s time.

Some more good Army news is that I was fortunate enough to get offered some Army school slots this upcoming summer. Only a fool would turn down any of these amazing opportunities and I got to pick between Airborne, Northern Warfare and an attempt at seizing a Combat Diver Scuba Slot. I picked the Northern Warfare slot but a lot of commitment and physical and mental training comes as a prerequisite in order to pass the school. It happens this summer in Alaska from July 31th – August 18th and it is going to be freezing up there even in the summer! I will probably turn into either an ice cube or lose my permanent Hispanic tan by the time I get back. I am excited but if I said I wasn’t nervous then I would be lying because I most definitely am! I know that I can do it but I have to prove myself now through physical conditioning so that I can be prepared instead of some cornfused cadet with the “deer in the headlights” approach to everything I will be presented with.

The Army’s Military Ball is happening this Friday and I am excited because I invited my friends Rachel and Lindsey to come up from ASU to be my dates to the ball! It is going to be fun and my friends Joshua and Emily had to get all dressed up today for inspections so that nothing we wear is entirely inappropriate. I mean, please, this is a professional environment. I am really looking forward to living with these two next year because they are great friends and I know that we will get along great.

Joshua, Emily, Steven

Instead of heading down to Tucson on an Admissions trip like I had hoped, my friends and I decided to experience a taste of spring break by heading up to Flagstaff for a daytrip. These past few weeks have been rather stressful and loaded with unnecessary amounts of busywork of which I attribute to laziness and procrastination on my part. We concluded some experiments and some other projects that needed finishing. For instance, we conducted a Social Psychology experiment during which we tested the students of ERAU when they went to eat. We put four signs, two “WOMEN ENTER HERE” and “MEN ENTER HERE” on the four doors of Chartwells to see if people would comply when they entered. For the most part, men only entered through doors marked with MEN and women entered through doors that said WOMEN on them but there were a few cases of people who accidentally or deliberately disobeyed with our experiment. To the few that entered through doors of the opposite gender we marked them as being Undetermined. It was humorous but now we have to write up a report about it and its due Friday along with a Psych test. SO instead of studying for that this weekend my Psych group, Shawn Emily, Joshua and I went to Flagstaff.

The night before on Friday we attended Casino Night in the Activity Fair where some 500 people or so (I actually don’t know but exaggerating the number will help someone make an image of people packed into the Activity Center) gathered to gamble fake money for charity and in an effort to win raffle prizes. I proved that I am the King of Blackjack despite the fact that when Bobby, Aaron and I went to a casino in San Diego I merely stood there and watched everyone lose. I won up to $5252 in fake money and bought a bunch of raffle tickets although I didn’t win anything. Whatever, its not like I could’ve used a free iPad or semester of housing or even that girl bike that some freshman won. Anyway, we stayed the night at Shawn’s house and then went to Flagstaff early the next morning. We rented our boards and boots from some cheaper place and then went up to the Snowbowl to start snowboarding. I have never gone before and was nervous for it because I fully expected to fall on my butt the entire time. Well, I can say with 100% guarantee that that happened pretty much most of the time. I caught on with snowboarding pretty quickly and learned to carve and head down the mountain pretty fast with an unorthodox method of mine. I would sit down on my butt and pretty much sled down the entire way at superspeed. It ended up hurting my wrists and butt pretty bad but it was worth it. We ran quite a few of the mountain courses and then when we reached a lodge I found that a cut on my wrist was bleeding pretty badly. It turns out that during one of my spills my wrist came in front of my to protect myself and my abnormally sharp incisor tooth cut my arm. Strange yeah but not unheard of.

After that happened I resigned to staying at the lodge eating chicken strips and keeping an eye out for snowbunnies while the other three tacked the Black Diamond trail. I fell asleep waiting for them to come back (hence there were no snowbunnies around and I was disappointed in Flagstaff) and when they did they were all dead and exhausted. I had regained some energy after my little nap and therefore was ready to call it a day. It was so much fun even though I did get frustrated after falling all the time. So that was our taste of mini-vacation and it sure was great to get away from this place for a while. But now we’re back and have PT tomorrow, just one more week left!!!

Jan. 21st was my birthday and lets just say that it was way different from last year’s experience. Last year it snowed and we actually had a snow day off from school so we made a nature/adventure video and then went to dinner. It is interesting to think that a whole year has gone by because I distinctly remember losing my pair of cheap gloves at the restaurant. Now this year it wasn’t as extravagant but was still nice, I had a boring day of school but then got to hang out with some of my friends at one of their houses and just celebrated quietly. It was a lot of fun and I hope that next years is even better because it will be my 21st on Jan. 21st!

So lately Prescott has been experiencing some MAJOR cold weather although there is no snow yet so nobody could tell that we are freezing to death up here!  The wind chill itself has to be in the negatives, and this morning for PT I thought we were going to freeze solid while running. We’ve dealt with colder PT days before but this was just ridiculous! The wind is so bitter and just numbs out faces and our fingers, you know that feeling when your hands are so cold you can’t fasten a button or text on your phone, it was 10x times worse than that!  While carrying the heavy water jugs during our squad runs today we discovered that the jugs were leaking. The water got all over those holding the jugs and froze on them within seconds! There was ice coming off our uniforms and we’ve never seen that before. It makes me wonder if the other ROTC companies all over the States are having to do PT same as us. I can tell that the whole country is facing this cold crisis because of how Facebook is blowing up with statuses reflecting the cold weather. At least our cars aren’t stranded and our pipes frozen, I guess those folks in the Midwest have it far worse, but the wind itself is too much for Arizona!