Leaving for the Hotel and Shippers Briefing

19 June 2011

I left Athens, GA today around 5:30 PM for the DoubleTree Hotel at the Atlanta Airport. A very close friend of mine, Ben Nyquist was kind enough to bring me and drop me off. It was very hard leaving Jesica, as the past few days have been emotional roller coasters. We both agreed to be strong and that even though 10 weeks is a long time, we could endure just about anything and make the best of it.

After a few necessary stops, Ben and I arrived at the hotel around 7:45pm. A good handshake and a "see you in 10" was exchanged. I reported to the basement floor at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) office. The Department of Defense contracts with hotels across the country to host these offices while soldiers are either waiting to take physicals or ship to Basic Training.  I checked in and was told to report back at 10:00pm for a "shippers" brief. The brief lasted about 20 minutes and we were basically told to not screw up tonight and ruin our chances of shipping tomorrow! When the briefing was over, all 65 of us migrated to our rooms. I am rooming tonight with a guy named, Ethan. He is 19 years old and a student at North Georgia College. He is also going into the National Guard as an infantry soldier. Very nice guy. We talked for almost 2 hours about things we each had heard about Basic Training and what we thought were myths or not.

It's about midnight now and I have to be up around 4:00am. Long day tomorrow at MEPS and the word is we will arrive at Fort Benning around 5:00pm. Should be interesting!

I hope everyone is doing well and I hope you will enjoy reading these posts.

Matthew