Inprocessing Day

Well, my brother Nathan is an appointee (and now a Basic!) at the United States Air Force Academy (ie, USAFA). This is a version of college - on steroids (as in, add a bunch of military stuff to it!). Nathan flew to Colorado Springs yesterday, and today he arrived at the USAFA campus and went through the grueling inprocessing day, where the new basics get yelled at, get a buzz hair cut, get yelled at, have to leave all their stuff behind, get yelled at, have to carry a 40 lb. bag around, get yelled at, etc.

USAFA has a site called WebGuy where a photographer posts picture for all the families of students to see. He already has 4,000 pictures up, after just one day! Well, we looked through most of those, and we found two of Nathan!

(nice job of closing your eyes Nathan!) ;-)

I also got a 30-second phone call from him a few minutes ago....he knew better than to call Mom & Dad because they're already in bed. He basically told me that he is in the A-squadron (Aggressors) and that he had to go. I would guess he had a nice cadre member breathing down his neck, but I don't know. I would guess they were soon going to take his phone from him. I know he won't have it for the five weeks or so while he undergoes Basic Cadet Training (or Beast as it is affectionately called!)

So that's all I have to report at this point....I wasn't expecting the phone call tonight - and I didn't realize he would be in such a hurry. But it was good to know that he survived the day :D

update: here is a picture that Nathan's host family (the family he stayed with Wednesday night) emailed us. This was taken right before the boys went through inprocessing.

The family had five basics stay with them, three of whom were from our area. The one to the right of Nathan lives just a few minutes from us! So we were happy that Nathan was able to fly to Colorado and spend the night with someone he's already gotten to know a little bit.