Receipt Day

My day started just like anyone else's day would: waking up in a hotel room at 4 in the morning and having breakfast 30 minutes later, getting on a bus, and going to the Little Rock Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS). That isn't how everyone starts their day? O well...anyways..after spending a couple hours at MEPS getting my orders, peeing in a cup, and getting my flight ticket, I was on my way to the airport and there I spent my whole $18.00 meal ticket on.....Starbucks. The flight was nice and before i knew it, I was at Chicago's O Hare Airport. The new recruits formed up and rid ourselves from any contraband (unauthorized material) and studied our 11 General Orders of the Sentry which is a requirement to know at RTC. So we get on the bus and 30 minutes later we get off the bus and and walk into the gate's of Hell. Did I really say Hell? I meant the gate's of the beginning of a Sailor's career: the United States Navy. It is around midnight now and we are tired. Do they care? Yep. i mean nope. We all walk in and instant shouting filled the passageway (hallway in the Navy). We go through a ditty bag issue where we are issued all of our essential non uniform items. Later comes another urinalysis and a little bit of...NAP TIME! Just about an hour though. And did i mention the extreme amount of bad attitudes and screaming? Yeah...at 5-6 AM we are at our temporary home inside the USS Pearl Harbor (they call buildings ships at RTC) and for the next 2 hours we are stamping our gear with our name, last 4, and our division number (mine was 307). Anything from a sea bag to our underwear (skivvies) to a pack of dental floss must be marked with a stamp or marker depending on what it is. We were finally able to eat some chow (breakfast in this case) and we still haven't had a half decent night's sleep since at the hotel. The food is pretty good for breakfast. There is ham, bacon, and turkey sausage to choose from for the main entree every morning along with hash browns, eggs, and pancakes, waffles, or a piece of French toast. The best part for me was the cereal. You could have cereal at every meal so I never went hungry. Cinnamon Toast crunch was a favorite of mine and I think I had that mixed with Reese's Puffs for my first breakfast along with some ham and hash browns. Well it sucks that chow has to end and can't go on forever but that is just time taking its course. We line up 3 abreast (3 lines) and start studying our general orders. Every single time we went to chow we HAD to bring our notebook, Training Guide, or Bluejacket's Manual. The latter 2 were for later stages in boot camp. When we got back to our compartment, we stamped a lot more and went over some basic stuff about fraternization, sexual harassment, and all that good stuff. 2 more meals and a lot of yelling by our Recruit Division Commanders (RDC's aka Red Ropes) and we were ready for our first Taps of our lives. It isn't just sleepy time in the Navy. Reveille is when everyone wakes up (usually at 0600) and Taps is when everyone turns into their racks (usually 2200 or 10PM). I thought every night would be like this given that we were under such stressful conditions. Everyone was out within seconds. That would change the following night, however...and we had not even started our Processing Days yet...