I can’t believe that this is the very last blog I’ll have to write for the year. The first semester of my college career has gone by so fast it’s incredible. We’re down to just two weeks of class, final exams, and we’re done. I feel like high school went by so much slower than college. Its probably because classes only meet two or three times a week instead of everyday, or the fact that we have so much work and we are constantly doing something so we don’t have down time. Anyway, in just three more months I’ll finally go into Blue Phase in the Corps of Cadets and I’ll finally be considered an upperclassmen cadet. It’ll seem even faster because one of those months is winter break.

Speaking of break, I might as well talk about my Thanksgiving break just to have something to write about. My break was pretty normal. Like everyone, I saw a ton of family. Every day we went over to another family member’s house. I saw all of my cousins, uncles, and aunts. I’m Hispanic, so we have a really big family. We all got together one day to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Then we got together again for Thanksgiving dinner at my house. My dad had surgery on his hand so me and my sister did most of the cooking. I prepared the turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. I thought all of that alone was a lot of food, but along with what I made, everyone that came over brought a dish or two of their own. After our feast, we all just relaxed and watched movies and played games until two in the morning. Besides family, I also got to see a lot of my friends from high school. A bunch of us got together and had a movie night. We ate pizza, shared college stories, watched movies, and just chilled, like old times. I also got to play a lot of tennis with my best friend. Something that I missed the most was playing my piano. I’ve been playing for the past 12 years, so after these last few months in college, I’ve been on piano withdrawal. I annoyed the crap out of my sister with how much I played when I got home. I also went to see Rise of the Guardians, which was an awesome movie. I don’t care what anyone says, Dreamworks makes the best animated movies and I will never be too old for them. The funniest part of my break was when I first got home. My friend Lindsey gave me a ride home, and as she pulled into my driveway my dog ran outside. I was so excited to see him. We both got out of the car and the first thing my dog does is run right by me, run around the car, and starts jumping on Lindsey. He didn’t even notice me! Im thinking “missed you too, pal”. But once he said hello to her, he noticed me and ran over.  He’s known me for a while so he probably gets more excited to meet new people!

I was actually having a pretty good week. I was finally doing pretty well in all of my classes and I was caught up on all of my work. I got an 80 on my chemistry test, which is a MAJOR improvement from my last grade. My spirits were high knowing that we only have 5 more days of school before we finally get to go home for thanksgiving break. And then the game happened. We were actually doing pretty well, considering the fact that everyone said Florida State was going to crush us. Yeah, we were down most of the time but we were managing to keep up, and not letting them get too much of a lead. Finally we got that touchdown and we were ahead of them. Everyone was going crazy thinking we might have a shot at this, we might actually win. And then they let Florida State get by and score a touchdown. Ok, its not totally hopeless. If we get another touchdown and the extra point we could win by 1. But no. On the final, most important play of the game, Logan Thomas decides to throw one of his famous interceptions. We lose. Not the way I wanted to celebrate the final game of the season, but whatever. After that interception I just wanted to get out of the cold, go back to my room and fall asleep. However, that didn’t happen. My night was about to get so much worse. Just as Im about to exit the stadium gates, I hear a voice yelling “all Air Force ROTC freshmen get over here now”. So of course all my Air Force buds and I head over. They then proceed to telling us “thank you so much, you have just volunteered to clean the entire east side of the stadium bleachers”. Of course, this was the largest section of bleachers in the stadium. You’ve got to be kidding me! So I spent the next 2 hours picking up garbage, and you know what I learned? People are disgusting! You’d think people would throw away their own freakin trash, right? I mean its not that hard. You just take it with you and throw it in the trash can on your way out. There are at least 4 of them by every single exit. But no, they just throw it or leave it on the ground under their seats. It was a disgusting mess. Nachos and cheese, chicken wing and turkey leg bones, drinks and bottles of alcohol, food, wrappers, dirty napkins, dip cans, you name it. We had to pick up everything. But that’s not the worst part. I actually found a dirty diaper and an empty condom wrapper! Are you freakin kidding me people? Just…NO, you don’t do that! That’s vial!

                We didn’t finish cleaning until 2:15 in the morning. I checked weatherbug and it said that it was 34 degrees. When my buds and I got back to the barracks, we went straight to the showers, closed the entrance curtain, turned on all the shower heads and made a sauna. We were all completely sore, especially after that morning’s workout for Air Force PT. Thank God my first class isn’t until 1:25.

So like I said last week, my blog for this week is going to be about my Halloween night with the Corps of Cadets.  And you know what? It was freakin awesome! In the corps we celebrate Stick-or-Treat. Don’t ask me why we call it that, because I have no clue. All the training companies (freshmen) had to be unified as to what they would be dressing up as. So one TC dressed up as the smurfs, another was the avengers, another dressed as super Mario characters, and so on.  My TC decided to dress up as bananas and two gorillas. We looked hilarious running around screaming being chased by the gorillas. Supposedly all of the TC’s lined up on upper quad and there was a judging contest to see which TC had the best costumes. I however, was not able to go to the judging because one of my teachers, who shall remain nameless, didn’t want to let us leave class early! But, whatever. When I got back to my room, I got on my costume and Stick-or-Treat began. The concept is that all of the freshmen cadets have to give candy to all of the upperclassmen cadets that come to our rooms. The 1^st time they come is a free pass. However, the second time they come, in order to get candy they have to perform a challenge that the freshman comes up with. This was where the fun part started for us. We made them do some crazy sh**! Some of my buds made them act out fight scenes from movies like batman vs. bane. They went all out in these fights just because they wanted more candy. Some had mini pies, and in order for the upperclassmen to get candy, they had to hit another upperclassman with a pie to the face. There were pies flying everywhere! They all wanted to get back at each other. Some made the upperclassmen lick a glob of nutella off of each other’s bare stomachs! Hair and all! And other challenges were a bit more intense. Some of us made some pretty questionable concoctions. For example, my roommate and I mixed drinks consisting of hot chocolate, marshmallows, crushed up Cheezits, and a pretty big helping of Mio Energy. It looked like vomit! The upperclassmen had the choice to accept or decline all of the challenges. A lot of them had the guts to try our drink, and man was it revolting. We had one guy run to the bathroom and puke! He wasn’t the only one that night. Some of my other buds offered gross drinks to them and people where upchucking left and right. I heard one the upperclassman say he had to eat shaving cream. The most popular challenge that night however was also the hardest. They had to drink a tablespoon of hot sauce, wasabi, and pepper. They were crying their eyes out from the burning pain. One guy ran into the girls bathroom to puke it out of his system. Thats what makes the night so fun. The upperclassmen and freshmen get to laugh and have fun together. They accept these challenges for the fun of it. They don’t have to do it if they don’t want to. They do it to raise the spirit of the corps. I cant wait to do it next year.

I would like to apologize in advance for this boring blog but I am seriously out of ideas on what to write about. I realize that every week I write about something going on in the corps, but to be honest, nothing else remotely exciting happens, so this is all that I can write about. This past weekend was family weekend, and my parents, my god parents, and my sister came to see me. My god parents arrived on Friday and spent the evening with me and took me out to dinner. I took them on a tour of the campus. Mostly I showed them my favorite spots such as the pylons, the drillfield and the duck pond. I was a pretty good tour guide too. Part of being a cadet is knowing random facts about the university that no one cares about. Like I could tell you that the 2 flag poles in front of Burruss Hall are exactly 77 feet apart and the longest pipe on the organ in the chapel is 16 feet tall. The university opened in 1872 and the very 1^st student was William Addison Caldwell. I would just tell them random crap like that and they were really impressed about how much I knew about the university. After the tour we went out to eat at Flynn’s Pub in downtown Blacksburg. After they left I went to go see The Dark Knight Rises over at Squires Student Center. That movie is epic. Saturday morning all the parents showed up. To show them how much we have progressed in the corps we had a Pass In Review out on the drillfield. We basically just march around with rifles, but to an audience it looks really impressive and professional. When I met up with my parents, my sister was laughing her ass off telling me about how both my parents started crying because of how proud of me they were. It was great seeing them again after 2 long months. I cant believe how much I missed my sister too. Usually we cant stand each other. I guess we get along a lot better after spending time away from each other. Don’t get me wrong, we fight a lot but I still love my sister. For lunch we went out to eat at Sharkey’s with my roommate and his parents. We had a great time eating there and watching the Tech football game, even though we lost. Then we went to our hotel and just stayed there the rest of the day watching TV. I missed watching TV so much, I havnt so much as watched a video on youtube let alone TV show since I came here. We mostly watched movies including Hitch, 300, Grown Ups, Easy-A, and Jeff Dunham’s Halloween Special. So that was pretty much my weekend. Now I have Halloween next week to look forward too. Freshmen in the corps have the pleasure of handing out candy to all of the upperclassmen cadets. And I have to dress up as a banana…awesome.

                I can quite honestly say that White Phase in the Corps of Cadets has been freakin awesome! We have earned so many privileges that just make life so much easier. And most of them are little things that regular people never really took the time to appreciate. I am now allowed to cut across the hallway in my residence hall, I can put stuff in my pockets, I’m allowed to grow my hair out to ¼” on top and 1/8” on the sides, I can work out in civilian clothes, and get this, I’m allowed to carry my backpack… on my back! I don’t have room inspections every day either. I only get graded on my room about twice a week now. But the best part is that on Fridays and weekends they let us go out and actually have fun. However, we’re not allowed to be by ourselves. We either have U-Pass, where we have to go everywhere with our entire TC of 29 people, or we have P-Pass, where split into 2 groups and go out, but we can’t leave our group. Last week we actually got to go into Christiansburg for the 1^st time and watch Taken 2, and we’ve been able to go to the breakzone and just chill and play games. I’m proud to say I’m getting pretty good at bowling. I actually got over a 100 for the 1^st time in my life. We also go out on the drillfield and play football a lot.

                As cadets we weren’t allowed to go home over fall break, but we still had a pretty good time. We had a Pass In Review in recognition of the graduating class of 1962. We had the chance to talk with alumni who graduated from the Corps all those years ago and hear all of their stories of what the Corps was like back then or about their life after graduation as commissioned officers. We got to march in the homecoming parade and went to the football game against Duke, which turned out to be epic after making a comeback from Duke’s 20 point lead.

                This weekend is going to be awesome too because it’s parents weekend. I am totally not afraid to admit that I miss my mom and dad. I can’t wait to see them, my older sister, my godparents, and cousin. I have not seen them in over 2 months; I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to be deployed and entire continents away from your loved ones, not seeing them for periods of over a year. Having a weekend away from the Corps will be amazing. I’ll actually get to sleep in a bed for the 1^st time since I got here (in the corps we sleep on top of our beds so we don’t have to make them every morning).