Day 23

May 17th
This morning we formed up in our ruck sack gear and waited for the Lieutenant. He showed up a bit late and then told us to go back to bed and be ready for breakfast at 7am. What an awesome surprise! Also, today was gas mask day! I was really excited but had some technical difficulties. As you know, I skipped supper yesterday and I was feeling a little queasy in the evening and this morning, so I wound up eating very little for breakfast. BAD IDEA! I was so low on energy. Then we marched over to the classroom and got into our bunny suits (gas suits) and holy cows, was it ever hot in them! Then we walked over to the gas hut which was a bit of a hike and formed up. I’m telling you, we were sweating so bad in the sun. It must have been like 25 degrees outside and we were in winter parkas with rubber gloves! Then to turn up the heat some more, they made us run around in the forest for a while followed by 50 jumping jacks and then more running! GAH! Finally we got to stop and form up for further instruction. I had to kneel and then sit down because I was getting dizzy standing there. That felt better, but then I started getting up slowly by kneeling first and then getting up. BAD IDEA….again. My body decided it liked the ground better and went right back down, damn it. Why am I always the one who tips over! Oh well, so like 3 ppl carried me to a rock and took the bunny suit half off me and I started cooling off. The medic took some basic info of my last 24hrs and made me drink. For all the people who know that I don’t like to drink much, I drank 2 liters of water out of my canteen today and a glass of water at lunch followed by 5 more glasses of various fluids at supper. I have never had that much to drink in one day in my life! Hydration really works, I feel better already. Our afternoon was spent outside in the sun doing camouflage stuff and learning how to move as a group in the field. That was a lot of fun. Since we are on constant supervision due to Sunday’s events we were put into the classroom to clean our rifles until 10pm. At least we got to watch a movie while cleaning!