Today was my first mission outside the base camp. I'm serving as a platoon leader for a combat engineer line platoon. There's actually a PL already here whom I'm shadowing until he leaves in a few weeks to become XO of another company. That's good because it means I can ease into things. Chris is also a PL in the same company.

Today was a good day because I got an M16A4, magazines, and a full load of ammo for both the M16 and my pistol, so I'm no longer running around without bullets or begging rounds off my buddies (in totally unrelated news, the supply sergeant just got back from R&R; suddenly it's easy to get stuff).

Today was also a good day because I got to blow some stuff up. That's bar none my favorite thing to do as an Army Engineer. I don't want to go into any more detail than that, but it was a productive day, and fun, albeit quite hot especially in full battle gear. I'll post some pictures some time later.

One other thing I wanted to mention while I'm thinking about it is sunblock. You really don't need to bring much, if any. There's tons of it lying around. They issue it to you at the CRC. And the only part of your body that is even in the sun is your face, maybe the back of your neck, and your hands. So you're not really going through it very fast. I have about 3-4 bottles of it that I brought or had given to me by people and I don't think I've opened any of them yet. Just FYI.