quickie....

Just a little update from an email Nathan sent to Dad and Mom.

Since the Falcons won their Sept. 11th game against BYU (their big time competitors), all the cadets got passes to go off base for the evening! So Nathan was able to get off campus and go to the OCF (Officers Christian Fellowship) meeting on Saturday.

That's all :)

Parents Weekend!!!!!!!

[Warning - this one will be long!]

Labor Day weekend is Parents Weekend at USAFA - which means that families are welcome to come visit their cadets and that the doolies are actually allowed to leave base Friday evening through Monday evening! Families can visit the classes and eat in Mitchell's on Friday, and there aren't any classes on Monday. There's also some other special activities, including the first football game of the season on Saturday. So Dad and Mom had been planning to go up for that since before Nathan left. And so had I, but Nathan didn't know that part! :D :D :D

Dad and Mom got in Thursday evening and were able to see Nathan for a little while, then they visited his Chinese and Chemistry classes with him on Friday. He went to their hotel room with them, and then at 1:00 in the morning I arrived and woke him up. [How I got there is a bit of a long story - but it doesn't belong here. You can check my personal blog for that.] When I woke him up, he smiled at me and was like "hi!" And then he suddenly realized that I was supposed to be in Arkansas, not in Colorado, and he got this "what are you doing here???" look on his face :D It was fun to surprise him!

Anyway, on Saturday we spent most of the day at the football game because doolies (and maybe all cadets) are required to attend all home football games. The Falcons beat the other team all hollow! USAFA has lots of traditions for football games, but I won't go into all those. We did get to meet a couple more of the live mascots though, and the Wings of Blue (the parachuting team) did a little demo.

(me with a couple of the mascots)
(This picture has most of the freshman in Nathan's squadron. They're affectionately referred to as "baby griffins" because the mascot of Mighty Mach 1 is a griffin. Nathan's in the back, second from the left)
(before the game, the cadet wing marches onto the field)

(a couple of the Wings of Blue parachuters)

(They have a tradition at USAFA that at football games the doolies "switch ranks" with upper classmen. The ranks are the dark blue things on Nathan's shoulders. He had two different ones, but it doesn't show up in the mirror as well as I hoped it would.)

It was super hot at the game and Nathan, Dad, and I all got bad sunburns (high altitude = easier to burn), but it was still fun. After the game, there was an open house at the home of the people in charge of the USAFA branch of Officers' Christian Fellowship. Every week there's an on-campus Bible study, a meeting between chapel services on Sunday, and an informal meeting at their house, all just for the cadets. The leaders we met seem like wonderful people who really care about the cadets. I'm so glad Nathan has the opportunity to have those times with other believers!

Saturday evening we drove around Garden of the Gods some. It was pretty, but it got dark too soon to enjoy it as much as we would have liked.

After we got back to the hotel, Nathan and I looked through some of the WebGuy pictures I had saved to my computer. Of course, that made him remember things about Basic to tell me. :)

Sunday morning we went to two different church services in Colorado Springs so Nathan could get a taste of some of his options. That afternoon we went on a tour out to Jacks Valley, where the basics had spent 2nd Beast. Here's Nathan at the end of the Assault Course:

It was neat to see some of the places where he had to work so hard. It made me feel sorry for him! All that stuff he had to do :/ I'm so proud of him for making it through though! :D


Sunday evening Nathan's host family had invited all "their" cadets and families to come over, so we did. It was nice to meet them. They are very friendly and want to provide the cadets opportunities to relax off campus whenever they get a chance.


Monday morning, Nathan took part in a marathon. No, he didn't run 26.2 miles. He was doing more of a relay marathon. A 1958 USAFA grad (who was in Mighty Mach 1) has a son with severe Cerebral Palsy. About 50 cadets from Mighty Mach 1 took turns pushing the son in a "wheeled jogger" in half mile or mile increments. They were hoping to break the record for that marathon, but they didn't quite get there.
Here's Nathan at his starting point: the 7-mile-marker.
And here's Nathan pushing Kenny during his turn. That's Kenny's dad pushing alongside Nathan, and the guy on the bike was helping them out too.
Here and here are a couple links to articles about the race.


Below is a random picture of Nathan in the van. That's his Contrails that he's holding. The page on the right has lots of ranks and other insignia that he has to have memorized.
After Nathan ran, we had to check out of our hotel. We spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon at a city park in Colorado Springs - but the scenery is so beautiful that it's basically equivalent to a state park. It has nice hiking trails too! So here's a slightly silly picture of Nathan from while we were hiking:

We went out to eat all together, and then I went to my friend's house to start the trip back to JBU. Dad and Mom dropped Nathan back off at campus, and thus ended our first Parents Weekend. It was terrific and I'm so glad I went! :D

informative email (from 8/23)

I know, I'm horribly tardy putting up this info. I've just been really busy with school starting and such. But enough about me, because this is Nathan's blog! :D So here is a general summary (because that's how he asked me to do it) of what Nathan said in a nice long email he sent us on the 23rd .

He has five "real" classes, along with five other things (intramurals, an orientation type class, and a couple others - all except intramurals start later in the semester, I think). His total credit hours, including the "extras" is 18.5 - so it's a heavy load. Thankfully, he was able to get transfer credit for English 1 because he took two semesters of community college English during his senior year. He's hoping to also get credit for Physics because he took an AP class and the AP test....but he wasn't sure about that yet.

• Basic Chinese class is "rather boring" since he's had quite a bit of Chinese, but that he's able to help out the other students in the class.
• Calculus II is "easy review" (he took that at community college during his senior year as well).
• Engineering is fascinating him (he went into lots of technical details that I didn't understand very well - but the gist is that they're doing model rocket stuff).
• Behavioral Science takes the most reading. He's the "section marcher" for that class (which means he calls the room to attention when the instructor walks in - and he helps with passing things out sometimes.
• Chemistry is his hardest class, because he has to re-memorize lots of stuff (he took it in 9th grade I think, so it's been a while).
• In Intramurals he's signed up for rugby - not his favorite, but he didn't have a choice. [I just really really hope he doesn't get hurt - rugby is much worse than football!]

The doolies (freshman) have to do lots of memorization of trivia, facts, etc. They have a small book called the "Contrails" that they will have completely memorized by the end of the year. [If you google "Contrails" and "USAFA," I bet you could find out more about it if you wanted to.] In addition to that, each week they are sent a "Probook" - 2 pages of knowledge that they have to know. Then each Monday they take a written test over it. It includes things like long quotes, airplanes and some of their specifications, and lots of other stuff. Lastly, every day the doolies have to know 3 menu items from each meal, summaries of 3 current news articles, and about five other things. As Nathan said, "Never a dull moment."

Despite all that, he likes the academic year better than basic! Rather than having "beatings" (cadre telling them to do push-ups or flutterkicks just because) like they did during basic, the doolies now only have scheduled training sessions. Around campus, the doolies do have to do certain [what I'll call silly] things like run on the outer marble strips in the courtyard, but the upperclassmen don't bother them too much. Nathan really enjoys being able to go places on his own (he couldn't do that during basic!). During the weekends, there's hardly any military stuff they have to do - it's basically free time for them.

That's basically all he had in that email.....he also asked us to pray that he would have wisdom on how much time to spend on school and military training. Thankfully, his cough he had during basic was finally gone by then.

I will hopefully post about Family Weekend (last weekend) later this evening or tomorrow.