Hi, I am Cara and I'll be Erin's transcriber while she is at the naval training center because she isn't allowed to use the computer. Erin's first letter arrived in the mail today! Here it is:
Hello! Well its Labor Day weekend and I'm finally finding some time to sit down and write a letter. We are just about three weeks in now and things are finally starting to fall into some sort of routine.
When we first got here it was, "be quiet" and "stay awake". We hit our beds/racks at like 0300 and were awaken at 0400 (AM military time) and another long day began of paperwork and waiting and staying awake.
Somewhere in the lack of sleep and travel I managed to get the flu, which sucked! They put me on bed rest for two days (they call it "sick in quarters" or SIQ) and then ("light and limited duty" or LLD) which means that they wouldn't let me march with the division so basically don't get sick at boot camp.
The mornings haven't been that bad actually. You get up when the lights go on and go to bed when the lights go off. The food is actually pretty good too. There are close to 80 females in our compartment which brings a little drama sometimes but I think people are starting to work together. We have both girls and guys in our division. We are officially 78 strong now. We have lost a few already and I'm sure we will loose more. I have been assigned the job of divisional Yoeman or DY which basically means I run the division from the paperwork side of things. I have to keep all the records for all recruits in my division up to date, make passes for people to go anywhere, sign people out and in, keep the schedule updated and posted and so on and so on. In the ranking system for recruits it makes me like 3rd in the chain of command. I have two and a half other Yoeman who work with me and we are always busy! We go to bed later and wake up before everyone and work while everyone is studying. The cool thing is I get to walk in front of the pack at grad and I get to wear a pretty officer pin.
The P.T. training hasn't been that hard, I passed all my first test, but next week is going to be hard and I'm going to be stressed about that but the worse is they fire me then I get some sleep!
Well, they are calling for letters now so I'll close this up.
