I apologize for not posting the past few months. Updating this site has been on the back of my mind for a couple weeks and now I'm finally taking the time to update it.
Continuing from my last post, I ended up spending Christmas in Virginia, far away from my family back in California. Myself, along with a few friends from guard duty, got "adopted" by a civilian family off-base. Anyway, we had Christmas dinner with them and had a great time.
For New Year's, I was very fortunate to go home for a couple days. The $800 ticket round-trip was well worth it! My family held off on celebrating their Christmas until New Year's, so really it was like I didn't miss anything!
As far as the School of Music goes, I'm about a month and a half into the program. I absolutely LOVE it here. Our days are pretty long due to the number of classes we have, but being so busy definitely makes the days go by very fast. Everyday I participate in concert band, ceremonial band, jazz band, ear training, music theory, and marching band. We exercise quite often. Many nights I have to go back to the school to complete my minimum 2 hours of daily individual practice time, but lately I've been pretty lucky and have had the evenings off.
A neat thing about this base -- and the school -- is that the Navy and Army is stationed here, too. It is great being able to talk to people from other branches of service, and hearing their stories. (Oh, and seeing different uniforms definitely breaks up the monotony of seeing the same uniform everyday.)
The Counter-March -- We are learning how to do this move in marching band
I almost forgot to mention...I got promoted to Lance Corporal! I'm very stoked. I earned the rank on February 1st, after completing more than 6 months of active duty service. For band members, promotion to the first couple ranks are automatic (promotion to PFC after graduating boot camp, and LCpl after 6 months). However, not every musician who went to boot camp when I did got promoted. There are more than a few that are still PFCs. The reason? Those Marines either got Page 11 entries for underage drinking (without incident), or Non-Judicial Punishment for being late to school one too many times (we call this going UA, or Unauthorized Absence...same thing as AWOL). Being promoted has much more prestige knowing that not everyone made the cut. It has to be earned.
Well, that is about all I have to say for now. Being President's Day weekend, we are on what is called a 72-hour liberty, or 3-day weekend. I haven't eaten dinner yet, so I'm going to go for a walk and stop by Subway.
Thanks for reading! As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to post a response! Or, let me know what you think about my blog!
Until next time,
LCpl Rice
