New class and Buttercup

Today was an odd day. For starters, a new ODS class started today, Kilo and Lima. Its weird to see them because we know exactly what they went through and what they are going to go through. I try to see how they're doing though and re-assure them that they can do this.

Today we had the Buttercup, a simulation of a ship that has been struck by the enemy and is now leaking. The morning session was spent learning about the equipment, how we were going to operate it and also getting an overview of where things were on the Buttercup. After that it was time to run drills. On the first one, I was assigned to the I-patch team which was responsible for repairing a leak that shot upwards. We got it fixed but forgot to leave our post with two hammers so we had to do it again. We eventually got it and I guess we saved the ship.

The second time around I started out on the K-patch team. Our job was to stop water from coming in the door and flooding the compartment. The investigators didn't see it until the separate hatch it was in was nearly full of water. So, when we went down we had to hold onto the pipes above. We were then told to get out so they could pump out the water. As we were standing on the deck I noticed our leader was lying down for some reason. Apparently they told her she was dead. Whether that was planned or not, I'll never know. Some of us looked around to see if anyone already had, or was going to, take command. When nobody did, I volunteered and just started barking out commands. Things seemed to go pretty smoothly and everyone said I did a really good job. It helps that my voice can be heard over the noise of the Buttercup and the chaos of everyone moving around and shouting.

We had PT in the afternoon even though India was not back from firefighting yet. We had a 20-minute run and then Sr. Chief informed us that someone broke the cell phone policy again and that India's Division Officer told someone that one of our members brought food into King Hall, another violation. We ended up going to the Pit, not so much for the violations but for not handling it amongst ourselves. It sounded like the reason we had brought food in was that one of our members was sick. It didn't matter though, since we ended up in the sand.

Firefighting is tomorrow and I'll probably sweat about 5 pounds off of me. Then we have more PT scheduled...woo-hoo!