News – Dying, but only on the inside
Don’t update your feeds people – I’m AM still here. I’ve just completed Week 9 of the 32 weeks of training, and things have finally started to improve. Not only am I starting to get more free time (but not enough to blog unfortunately), but I’m stomping my way through training like a fat kid through a bakery. Earned myself a “superior” pass in our fitness tests, on my way towards the shooting trophy and a recruit leader’s position – so basically I’m awesome at everything.
Which you already knew.
But I am shattered, and the marines take over every inch of your life while you’re on base. Thankfully I’ve managed to get off base most weekends to annoy a defenceless English girl who mistakenly believes I’m her charity case, and in Week 15 (mid-February) I finally get to have my laptop on base with me. I’m on two weeks Christmas holidays at the moment, so I’m trying to squeeze in as much sleep/blogging/drinking/general ginge chaos as I can before I have to slip back into jarhead mode again.
Now normally this would be fairly easy to do since I’m staying in a hostel in London over Christmas. Especially since I just completed the Monopoly board pub crawl again. Unfortunately though I’ve got one of the South African guys I’m training with in the me hostel too. And given he;
- Has all the personality of a house brick, coupled with all the social etiquette skills of Ted Bundy
- Spends money about as frequently as he charms people
- Needs someone (eg. me) to tell him when to eat, shit, shower and smile
- Has two modes – moaning, and being an ignorant asshole
… I’m finding it a little harder than normal to switch it off. In retrospect it probably wasn’t the best move adopting another cultural orphan for the Christmas break (especially given how much a walking fail he is, and my instinctual need to punch orphans). But somewhere in my tiny little black heart I feel something whenever I picture him alone in a hostel on Christmas day.
And I was pretty sure that feeling is hunger, so I’m going to go eat something. In the meantime keep an eye out for a few fresh posts when I (briefly) return to being a semi-functional human being, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do around Christmas.