Letter from John

Hello Everyone,
I received a long letter from John. He wrote it Feb. 19th and asked me to post it for all of you.

Dear Mom,
Red Phase, the first three weeks of Basic, is going to be hard. My morale is high but I'm really frustrated with people not being able to follow simple directions. I'm having a hard time getting used to not saying "thank you", "I'm sorry", "yeah", "ok", "Sir", "Ma'am", etc. I get smoked every time I do...oops. I also have already gained 7 pounds. I am up to 149 from 142. I am eating very well, but very quickly. You wouldn't believe how fast I can kill a huge tray of food. About four minutes. For breakfast today I ate French toast, eggs, lucky charms, yogurt, and Gatorade. For lunch I had chili and rice and Gatorade. For dinner I had...get this, Veal Parmesan, mac n cheese, mashed potatoes and salad and of course Gatorade. We have been getting smoked constantly. In the middle of writing this letter, we got dropped for 35 push-ups and about 10 minutes in the front leaning rest position 'cause no one would shut the heck up. I went to church this morning. Our chaplain is a really nice guy from Haiti. He is a captain so when we see him we have to stand at attention. Then he says, "Carry on," and we go about our business. After church I went to a meeting for people interested in joining the choir. I love to sing and I should get to play a guitar! That will be nice as we don't get much chance to display individuality and creativity around here. It's weird wearing my ACU's, (my camo uniform) to church.
As far as training goes, during this week we have mostly sat in classrooms and gotten briefings on how the army works, and taking care of ourselves, (hygiene, finances, etc.). We have also been PTing every morning. We had our first PT test 2 days ago, I didn't do too well. I only got 22 push-ups, 36 sit-ups, and 2miles in 17:59, all failing scores. I'll get it together though. Practice makes perfect and I've been practicing a lot. Well, gotta sleep now.
Miss everyone,
PFC John Owens