So, where were we last time? Oh yeah, the first night.

Between the cacophony of snoring from my squadmates, the soreness of my legs, the general anxiety about what was going to happen tomorrow, and the fact that this far up north, the sun never really goes away in the summer and the barracks room had no curtains, I didn't have the easiest time falling asleep. Nonetheless, at some point the exhaustion won and I drifted off to dreamland.

Now at this point I need to clarify that I am pretty much as far from a morning person as physically possible. Once I'm out, I can sleep through all manner of noises and disturbances up to and including thunderstorms, and even when I do wake up it often takes my brain a few moments to sync up and comprehend where I am and what's going on around me.

You know how sometimes when you're dreaming and there's for example loud sounds going on around you, they can sort of bleed through into your dream? Well, I was having a dream where I was relaxing on the porch of my childhood home, listening to the singing birds and the wind in the trees. Suddenly, I started hearing a loud, metallic clanging sound and muffled shouting.

As I would later hear from my squadmates, I had managed to sleep through my squad leader kicking open the door, flicking the lights on, repeatedly banging on a mess kit lid with a spoon and yelling "GOOD MORNING FUCKHEADS, YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO GET UP!"

What I did not manage to sleep through, however, was when he crouched down right by my ear and shouted "UP, YOU LAZY WANKER!" at the top of his lungs. This definitely succeeded in waking me up, to the point that I managed to hit my head on the top bunk on the way up. I then found myself standing next to my bunk at parade rest, my brain still in the process of rebooting, trying and failing to comprehend everything going on around me.

Next up, it was time for the usual morning activities. You know, shave, wash your face, brush your teeth, the usual stuff. Except this time, we would have five minutes for all of this. And if we didn't hit that deadline, tomorrow we would only have four, and so forth. This time pressure definitely would make me very good at efficient multi-tasking over the following weeks.

After that, it was time to learn how to make our beds. And of course, "neat and tidy" wasn't good enough. Oh no, there was a very specific way it needed to be done and a very specific way the end result had to look. This introduced us to a process we would be repeating many, many times in the coming eight weeks:

1) Get shown how a thing is supposed to be done.

2) Replicate the thing to the best of our ability.

3) Get told that we are lazy, stupid uncle-fuckers, did it wrong/too slow and have to do it again.

4) Repeat steps 2&3 until A) we finally achieved a satisfactory result or B) whoever was training us got bored and/or realized we're out of time.

This time, it was option B, as our time slot for breakfast was coming up. Long story short, because of certain scheduling fuck-ups, we were given a grand total of 15 minutes to enjoy our breakfast. Of course, this included queueing up in the dining hall, going through and grabbing our food, and then returning our plates/cups/etc and getting to the muster point outside, so the actual eating time shook out to about 7-8 minutes. Yay.

After breakfast, it was time for medical. We got like five different vaccines (half of which I already had but of course, no-one cared) and were put through an extensive health check, with one guy from my company being sent home due to a previously undiagnosed heart disease. As it turns out, they had to give us a medical check for liability reasons before they were allowed to make us do PT, so that nobody would drop dead from undiagnosed myocarditis or something. But now that we had that out of the way... Oh boy, there was a looot of running ahead.

Now, after this, details get a bit foggy. I find that between the sheer amount of things we did, the constant sleep-deprived brain fog I was in, and the years that have passed since, it's a bit difficult to remember exactly what happened and in what order. But here's a few things that occurred over the first week or so, in no particular order.

-Being issued our rifles, and "encouraged" to memorize the serial number by way of our squad leaders asking for it at random times, and getting to do push-ups every time we forgot (I still remember mine to this day).

-The 12 minute run test (my fat ass squeaked by with a juuuuust barely acceptable score).

-Being issued gas masks, and learning the proper way to act in a potential NBC situation (mask on, gloves on, rain gear on, tape down sleeves and pant legs if tape is available).

-Running in NBC gear (On a 31c/88f day too, I was fairly certain I was about to die towards the end of it).

-Going through the gas chamber (Tear gas sure is a memorable experience).

-More running (of course).

-One of my squadmates, having lasted all of five days, deciding to switch to civilian service and head home.

-More running (what else?)

Another element of daily life that grew to be the bane of my existence was cleaning. There was a lot of that. And since cleaning happened towards the end of the day, if we got done fast enough we would maybe possibly even have a bit of free time. Which of course was an unbearable thought to our squad leaders, so they did everything in their power to make cleaning inspections drag out.

It became a sort of constantly evolving cat and mouse game, with us cleaning the place ever more meticulously and our squad leader coming up with new, innovative, out of the box strategies to find dust somewhere in the room. First it was the top of the door jam, so next time we cleaned that. Then under the lockers. Then the tops of the lockers. Then the speaker for the intercom system. It escalated to the point that this fucker was bringing in a step ladder to find dust on the ceiling lamp mounted at a 3m/10ft height, or detach the light switch to find dust in the space behind it. I was half expecting him to start carrying dust in his pockets just to sprinkle it around and make us do it again.

The days passed in a haze of sleep deprivation, constant running, boring lectures where it was an impossible challenge to not doze off, and cleaning. Then that magical day arrived, the day I would for the first time actually find myself enjoying what I was doing in the military. Range day. And to make it even better, it was also the day we would go on our first weekend leave.

I've always had an interest in marksmanship. I'd been doing archery since I was a kid, and when I was 15 my dad got an air rifle and we would regularly shoot in the back yard together to see which of us could nail the best score. From the very moment I was first handed my RK-62, I had been itching to do some shooting. And now it was time.

The weather was rainy, cold and generally miserable. We would be eating a field lunch at the range, and the food had been delayed by a logistical fuckup so everyone was hungry. But I didn't care. I was at the range, making good hits, and having a blast.

After we got done shooting, it was time to change into our dress uniforms, shave, and get our rooms and lockers in order. It was time to go home. And so, I'll end on the words of wisdom our company commander dismissed us with;

"If you go out, don't drink too much. If you do drink too much, don't get into fights. If you do get into fights, don't get caught."