Natural disaster week!

Apparently in Virginia it was national disasters week because not only did we have a hurricane over the weekend, we also had an earthquake earlier in the week!  We also woke up to yucky smoke on Thursday morning from a wildfire that was burning south of us.  It truly looked apocalyptic!!

The earthquake was the first time I've ever felt something like that.  Last year there was an earthquake felt in Rochester, but I was at work in a very large building and I definitely didn't feel it at all.  It was weird, it just felt like the building was wobbling for a good 15 seconds.  It was not what I thought an earthquake should feel like!

And then there was Irene...hurricane Irene that is.  At first, the school of music was going to have us all evacuate to an army base up by Richmond, VA.  But then on Thursday the decision was made to "shelter in place" here in the barracks.  I was glad that we didn't have to go anywhere!  But a little scared because I've never been in a hurricane before.

So on Friday we ended up not having any classes, instead we helped to secure the music building for the hurricane.  It involved lots of sandbags and lots of plastic:

Photo credit: School of Music facebook page

Fun times!  We were done by 11am, so then we had the rest of the day off!  The rain started at around midnight on Friday night (I only know this because I had watch from midnight - 2am that night), and it didn't stop until after the storm passed on Sunday morning.  Basically we had wind and rain all day on Saturday, we even had a couple tornado warnings in the morning where we all had to go down to the bottom floor of the building that I live in.  But that was the most excitement that I experienced.  The wind got pretty bad when the hurricane actually got to us, but honestly, I slept through most of it!  We didn't even lose power.  Woke up Sunday morning to blue skies and sunshine.  It was such a beautiful day considering how it was 24 hours prior!  So the moral of the story...category 1 hurricane = no big deal.  Just stay inside!

So beside the hurricane/earthquake/fire, all is well.  I'm working really hard here!  I've been trying to go to school early (ahem, 6:30am!) to get a warm up in, and it really does help.  The past week I've been in a playing group for the first two periods of the day, so it helps to get some long tones in before I start.  And I haven't had that much time to practice during the day because my schedule is full of ensembles - I'm one of only two clarinetists here!  I've already had a performance with the "grad band" at graduation.  It was pretty scary, mostly because I am still learning all the movements that we have to do while marching.  Drill band is a constant stressor in my life right now, haha.  It is so much new information that I have to process and execute, and I'm not exactly the most coordinated person ever.  I still really suck at doing an about face (which I have to do to get out of the concert split formation during graduation performances!)

Basically, I'm pretty exhausted by the time evening muster comes around at 9:45pm.  But I want to make my experience worthwhile here, I want to get better!  I want that early advancement, which I can get if I do really well here at the school.  And of course I still want to be in a premiere band one day.

For my solo piece here at the school, I've decided to to A Set for Clarinet by Martino.  I'm looking forward to playing the piece, but I'm sure that I will want to kill myself at some point between now and my final audition, LOL!  Its just that type of piece.  But I've done difficult works like this in a limited amount of time (flashback to my Eastman MM recital and Dancing Solo!) so I know I can do it.  And I basically have more practice time than I know what to do with here!

In other news, Ben is moving down here this week!  Last weekend we actually found an apartment to live in, and it happens to be right outside the base gate that the band hall is just inside of.  We didn't even know that until after we had put a deposit down on the place!  So it worked out.  Its about 20 minutes away from Little Creek, but I think I can deal with that for 2 months (plus I'm probably going to be commuting at 6am or earlier, so traffic shouldn't be an issue).  I'm just excited that I get to move out of the barracks!

Its been about 6 weeks since I arrived here.  I can't believe how fast its going by!  I've almost been here for as long as I was at boot camp.  I hope that it keeps going by fast, I want to get to the band and start what I joined the Navy to do.  Just over 8 weeks left to go!

Whoa.

Whoa!  I can't believe its been four weeks since I arrived here from boot camp!  Its been quite a whirlwind since the last time I've blogged....

So I have been officially approved for acceleration at the school, which means I'll be graduating on October 28th.  I ended up having crazy fast turnaround time for approval apparently, it took only one day!  So now I'm on a self paced individual study program for my academics, and an accelerated schedule for my performance assessments.  I'm hoping to finish my academics by the end of September so that I can spend the last month focusing on my playing.

I also found out another very important piece of information!  I found out where I'm going to be stationed...drumroll please...I'll be part of the U.S. Fleet Forces Band in Norfolk, VA.  So that means I'll be staying right here in Virginia!  I will be living in the same area, because the Norfolk base is only 20 minutes away from where I am living now!  Definitely not how I had originally planned, but I think I'm OK with it.  I'm excited because they have an actual wind ensemble in addition to the ceremonial band (most of the Navy fleet bands only have a ceremonial band because there isn't enough players for a concert band).

So my days are filled with practicing, studying, cleaning, being on watch, and obsessing about my uniform (because its necessary!  They are super picky with us because we are the "face" of the Navy and we have to look gooooood.)  This past week, I just changed rooms in the barracks because my room was so messed up!  But it looks like I'll be moving out of the barracks in a few weeks anyway, because Ben's going to be moving down (since I'll be stationed in Norfolk) soon, so I'll get to live off base!  Being married in the military definitely has its perks.  He is coming to visit this coming weekend and I am so excited to see him!  But we may end up spending most of our weekend looking for a place to live.  I think I'm ok with that though :)

I'm back!

Well, I survived.  I’ve made it through Navy boot camp and the first two weeks of “A” school.  I never thought I would make it to this point, so it feels great.  It was quite an adventure, I met some great people, met some not so great people, and I learned a lot about myself.  Where shall I start?  Oh yes, at the very beginning…

I flew into Chicago O’hare at around 6pm on May 23^rd.  I was traveling with one other person, and we checked in with the USO, and we ended up sitting on the floor in an empty part of the airport lobby for around 4 hours (we had to wait for other people to arrive to fill up the busses).  I remember thinking how much that sucked at the time, but now that I look back it was definitely a preview of things to come!  The bus picked us up at around 10pm (I think…it was 10 weeks ago so it’s hard to remember!) and we embarked on our 45 minute journey from the airport to Great Lakes.

Once we got there we were greeted by RDCs (Recruit Division Commanders…Navy’s version of “drill sergeants”) yelling and cursing at us.  It was pretty shocking how they didn’t let anything hold them back with regards to insults…but I guess that’s how it works in any military boot camp!  I won’t bore you with details, but that night there was a lot of standing in lines for extended periods of time and also sitting and doing nothing at all for extended periods of time.  The latter was hardest because we had to stay awake all night…and if you got caught sleeping it was bad news!  It’s much harder to fall asleep when you are standing up.  Anyways, I ended up getting put into a special performing division…but the catch was that they were a week ahead so I had to catch up quickly!  A lot of rules I had to learn the hard way…which was getting yelled at when I did something wrong.  I already have a pretty thick skin, but it definitely got thicker those first couple weeks!  But it got better and better the more time passed.  I am glad that I got put in the performing division though; it gave me a chance to play at least once a week!  And it was a nice escape every Saturday.  It was also fun to perform at graduation!

Basically our days were filled with academic classes, PT (physical training), other training, inspections, and a lot of standing around doing nothing.  I learned that standing is a skill that is definitely learned in boot camp!  I also fell asleep multiple times standing up.  Yes it is possible!  You think that’s bad, someone in my division told me that they fell asleep while we were marching once, LOL!  We got 8 hours to sleep every night, but we also had to stand watches during the night (2 hour shifts – I didn’t have it every night, but definitely at least once a week I was standing a night watch), and iron for 30 minutes during light’s out (we had a nightly schedule that rotated).  So sleep sometimes was intermittent…it was rare that I actually got a full 8 hours of sleep.

Some of the cool things that I got to do during boot camp were shoot a 9mm pistol, shoot a shotgun, get tear gassed (not as bad as they say!), and learn how to fight fires.  Some of the things that sucked were getting 8 shots in the arms and one in the bootie (ouch!), showering everyday with 40 other females, getting called “female” all the time, getting tear gassed (it was cool after the fact, but still sucked real bad at the time!), the multiple trips to the dentist (I had to get quite a few fillings!), and knowing that if you even breathed wrong you were going to get yelled at or “IT-ed” (which means “intensive training”…I’ll let you use your imagination on that one).  Oh yes and I got really sick during 4th of July weekend.  THAT was fun.

I also won the Academic Award at boot camp, which meant I scored really high on the written exams.  I didn’t try that hard so it surprised me when I found out that I won.  I also didn’t realize how big of a deal it was!  At graduation I had to salute the Commanding Officer and shake hands with three other people.  After the graduation ceremony I was awarded a certificate and a coin and got to talk with the CO, XO, and the Command Master Chief of RTC (Recruit Training Command), among others!  It was really cool.  Only 5 of us out of 500 got that privilege!  Here's some pictures that I scrounged up from the interwebs:

In formation to receive our awards (can you spot me?)

Receiving my award certificate from Command Master Chief Dodd

Shaking hands with the Ambassador to Canada

Playing in the band at graduation!

Now I’m here at my “A” School, Navy School of Music.  The first week was really hard, mostly adjusting to a completely different life that what boot camp is.  It is way more relaxed here.  I didn’t realize that I had put up such a guard during the previous 8 weeks until I got back out into the real world, it was really hard to bring that down and let myself be vulnerable again.  This past weekend we entered “phase 2” which means we can wear civilian clothes and go off base.  I finally felt normal again for the first time in 10 weeks!  

The school here is mostly made up of Marines, they outnumber us sailors by a lot.  The Army is here too, but they have their own separate program.  The first week was tough also because I had to learn all the Marine ranks (and they are super picky about them!) and also the Army ranks so that we can greet the senior enlisted personnel when we see them in the hallway.  Also, we didn’t get to start classes right away, so we were put on what is called “X-Division”, which basically means you have to clean and do all the crappy work that nobody else wants to do.  Luckily most days there wasn’t much to do so we just got to practice most of the time.  But it was still annoying having to muster 2 times a day!

This week is our “class up” week, where we finally start classes, take our diagnostic exams, etc.  Yesterday I had both the written and ear training exams, and my incoming audition. I did pretty well on my incoming audition, I scored beyond what is needed to graduate from the school, which means that I could accelerate through the program if I passed the written and ear training exams.   I’ve been studying pretty hard the last two weeks so I did really well on the written exam, and OK on the ear training test.  It was enough to have them recommend me for acceleration!  I still have to get approved by the upper levels, though, but it shouldn’t be a problem.

So that’s it for now!  I’m still getting used to everything here, and even still getting used to being in the military.  I’m still getting used to the idea that I’m not a civilian anymore.  I noticed a big difference in how people treated me while I was traveling (wearing my dress whites) to Virginia.  The uniform really does command respect!  It was strange…I’m used to the normal rudeness from stressed travelers, but I got none of that.  Sometimes I still pinch myself, thinking that this is a dream or something.  I’m a real life sailor in the Navy, and I’m getting paid to do what I love most!  How cool is that?