Orientation Day 1

Well my roommate and I started with the best experience ever. Somehow we set our clock to the wrong time. So when we thought we woke up at 8 it was still really only seven and we had no idea why no one else was up yet. We plugged in our clock last night and we tried to go based off Miranda’s phone that we thought was stuck on Eastern time; so we figured Germany was six hours ahead. What’s even worse to think about is that the sun rises between like 4-5 am; I know this because I remember waking up at our clock (that was off an hour) saying 5:30 am and it was bright outside. Also the Army men (yes I figured out we are on an army base) do like PT and drills right outside our window early in the morning. So at least I now know that I won’t ever miss work because I won’t be able to sleep in. But anyways back to figuring out how our clock was wrong… Miranda and I got up at what we thought was 7:30 just because we couldn’t sleep with all of them talking outside (mostly cuz my window was open and it doesn’t really stay closed…. Or at least I haven’t figured out how to lock it shut) and just went about getting dressed and ready and eating breakfast and stuff and we even had time to wander the building to find the community kitchen in the barracks. So then we just hung out and laid around until ten til 9 and then walked downstairs because we were supposed to meet and get picked up at five til 9. There were all these people walking by and we noticed none of the other girls were down there yet and we were like what the heck. So finally we asked one of the men that came out what time it was and he said “uhm it’s 7:57 am why?” and we were like oh my god are you serious and we could tell he was about to ask if we needed something but then figured out we were just dumb and were an hour off.

The barracks I live in are the MP (Military Police) barracks. I think mostly guys live in the building (considering their wifi names are things like “fuck off” ) but we did see a girl working the desk downstairs. Miranda and I want to like find one of our neighbors and get their wifi password so that we don’t have to walk over to the library or café or anywhere to get wifi. It’d be so nice to be able to just have it in our room. Because when there’s down time (like the huge amount of time we had this morning) there’s not much to do. We have a TV and DVD player… but we didn’t bring any movies and there isn’t cable, we don’t have internet or phone service, and there’s nowhere to really go and hang out (that we know of yet).

So today was just a lot of reading and papers. But I also got to see where I will be working and got a tour of the whole site. There’s a lot of stuff that is open to us even though the PX and the Commissary are not open to us. But if we make friends with our POC or the people we work with, most of them are willing to take us there if we need it. There’s also a bowling alley and a movie theater and a gym open to us. We also get to use the bus for free to get around form installation to installation. But everything is also within a short walk so that will be nice. I am not really allowed to take pictures of things on base so that’s why I don’t have any pictures up yet or anything to show you what I am talking about. Everything is still a whirlwind experience and a lot to take in, but hopefully soon I will get a better handle on things. Tonight we are going to dinner at our POC’s house and that will be cool. I am not sure what else we have going on tonight and then tomorrow we have more boring training and then we start observations on our work site. I might have to work 5:30 am- 2:30 pm but I really hope not I rather start a little later and be done later. But we do work 8 hour days Monday- Friday and every Thursday we get to go on a field trip with the kids. It’s still been a really long day and I definitely need to catch up on sleep. I just can’t wait to really be able to know my schedule and know my way around so I can stop feeling like a wandering weirdo.