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).   

So I was sitting at my computer desk for about 15 minutes trying to decide on what to write my blog about. I was not allowed to watch the presidential debate like we were advised to, so I couldn’t really think of a topic. Then it hit me. Why am I not allowed to watch the presidential debate? Because the Corps won’t let me. There are so many things the Corps will not let us do, things that I used to do on a daily basis. For instance, freshmen aren’t allowed to have TV’s in their room. I miss watching TV so much! I miss watching all my favorite shows like The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, and so many others. Don’t get me wrong; watching TV wasn’t all I did in my spare time, I wasn’t a couch potato, but I did enjoy watching my shows after a long day. Along with TV, were not allowed to watch movies or videos in our dorm rooms or anywhere on upper quad. This includes Hulu, Netflix, and sadly YouTube. Another thing I miss is music. Music was a huge part of my life. I listened to music every day. I listened to it while eating, doing homework, even to fall asleep. However, freshmen are not allowed to listen to music in their rooms. And what makes me really mad is that sometimes the upperclassmen play they’re music super loud so that we can hear it all the way down the hallway, and most of the time its bad music.  What I miss the most, however, is playing the piano. I’ve been playing piano for the past 12, almost 13 years. Now I’m on piano withdrawal. That was the one thing I did each and every day at home. Piano was just my way of relieving stress, expressing my emotions, and just escaping the world. I could seriously sit and play at my piano for hours on end and not even realize what I was playing. That’s how much my mind got into it, after so many years it just became second nature. But what really sucks is that we’re not allowed to really have any fun. I would love to go out on weekends and just hang out with friends, go see a movie, go play some games at the BreakZone in Squires. But they don’t give us time to do that stuff. Sometimes I wish I could have a normal college career and be able to go to parties, tailgates, and stuff. It’s hard to socialize and make friends with civilians when we’re never allowed to go out. That’s kind of the reason why we are so close with our buds in our Training Company, we’re basically all each other have. That’s why cadets are always seen walking in groups, we’re closer than friends or even brothers, we’re buds.