I got my mission call this week! I’ll be serving in the Salta, Argentina mission speaking Spanish. I have a week of online MTC starting August 21 then go to the Mexico City MTC for 5 weeks before finally making it to Salta, located in the northwest point of Argentina, bordering Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Between now and then, I have to make it through another month of school, 6 weeks of training this summer, and totally out-processing from West Point and the army. Opening my mission call on Zoom so my parents could be with me. My mom was visiting my Grandma, so she got to join in. And Jane was working a late […]
Norwegian Foot March
The Norwegian Foot March started as a way to test the Norwegian Army’s readiness during World War 1; completing it now earns you a badge to wear on your dress uniform. The march happens overnight and has competitors covering 30 kilometers (around 18.8 miles) while carrying an 11-kilogram (25-pound) backpack in under 4.5 hours. The average pace per mile needed to meet the time requirement is 14 minutes and 30 seconds per mile. The course at West Point is a hilly 6-mile loop that is done 3 times. My roommates and I started on Friday night at 8:34 with around 35 pounds each (35 pounds is the standard weight for most US Army tests so […]
Emergency Leave
This week I had the fun experience of learning how Emergency Leave works. I found out last weekend that my grandfather had died from esophageal cancer. The bureaucratic machine that is the army went into motion to get me home for his funeral. On Monday, my mom talked to the Red Cross who helps verify the death for the army. From there, the Red Cross talked to West Point to initiate the paperwork process to get me excused from classes and weekend training. That evening, I spent several hours working with some of the cadets in my company on the “Exception to Policy” paperwork that would need to get signed off by a couple of […]