Drill With Columbus SWAT

I know, this is way overdo...

A few weeks ago, my unit had the opportunity to train with the Columbus SWAT. It was a unique experience for the SWAT to teach us their methods of clearing buildings. Though their method is geared towards a more civilian use, I believe that we can take some of the things we learned and apply them for a military purpose. In addition, we had an awards ceremony in which a number of Marines were awarded a bronze star and commendation medals. You can read about them here: Columbus Dispatch.

In other news, a number of people have expressed interest in my newly painted apartment. Well, here are a few photos I have taken of my room; I still need to add some things to my walls like pictures and stuff, but this is a good start for a first time.

Before



After

I really like having a mini fridge in my room; keeps the roommates out of my stash. And if anyone is interested, the paint color I chose is called Soba from the Martha Stewart Collection. To answer some questions, yes I did pick out everything myself and curtains cost too much money.

Impact

Recently, I returned from a trip to Hillsdale, Michigan for a weeklong summer camp with my church's youth group and about 600 other teenagers. It has been many years since the last time I was able to make this trip, but it was good to be able to go and see some old friends, make some new ones, and really just to get a refreshing from God. During my stay, my job duties included security (go figure) and team leader. As a team leader, I had a group of 12 teenagers in the 16-18 age group, I had a great time trying to coach my team during the games; though we finished around 8th.

Now, trying to do security at night was not all that fun. There are always some guys who think it is cool to get out of their cabins at night and try to make it across the lake to the girls' side to prank them. For the most part, they mostly fail except for a few individuals who like to get out at the wee hours of the morning and cause me to lose sleep. This does not make me a very happy person to be around. On the last night, I went to sleep at 6AM till 8AM when we had to pack and leave. The reason being, some guys got out, which we knew they were but did nothing to stop it, and they tried to cause some trouble. All they did was run around the woods until about 1:30AM. For the remainder of the night, I just patrolled around camp in a speedily golf cart.

On a side note, I have been adding some new photos to my flickr and will continue to do so. Some people thought that I was back in Iraq, rather these are old photos from last year that I thought were inappropriate to post at the time. So, enjoy.