Saturday

If you miss my ROTC posts, well, here ya go! Haha. Ang saya saya. We're actually scheduled to go to the Naval Base today to do our finals in marksmanship. I actually have a recurring dream about arriving late for something very important, which happened again last night. Hopefully wala pa namang nagkakatotoo. Pero ayun, the night before an event where I'm supposed to wake up early, I always dream about getting up late and end up missing it! Haaaay. Panaginip. Wala lang! So anyway, back to ROTC. We left school after 7:30, which kinda sucks because we were expected at 6:30 and I got at school at about 6:15, but I guess it's OK. There was free food! Akalain mo un!? And besides that, we were pretty much at ease for the most part. We did a lot of boring stuff in the morning, which I'm just gonna skip. Let's get to the exciting part - marksmanship!

We were treated to another lecture about safety in handling the M-16 rifle (twice actually) but I hey, you can never be too safe. After that we were first in line to fire (syempre, MODEL yata to!) so I got down on the ground and aimed at my target. It was a lot farther than what we were used to in dry firing, but fortunately, I was able to force my contacts in my eyes this morning and had no trouble seeing it . The actual firing was actually much less complicated than the dry firing we did at school. It was like, load the magazine, kasa (sorry, di ko alam English term eh), set to semi-auto then fire, unlike the dry firing where we were taught a bunch of commands that were seemingly unneccessary. We weren't wearing any protection for our ears, para daw maslalo naming maramdaman ung impact, which is a stupid excuse, pero sige, OK lang. Medyo curious din ako eh. Haha. And besides, we were only going to do this once, so it probably won't damage my ears THAT much. So ayun, fire when ready na daw! Yehey! I focused on the target before I fired, so maraming nauna sa akin. SHIT! Ang lakas pala ng tunog! Hindi pa ako ung nag-fa-fire nagriring na ung ears ko! Parang sinturon ni hudas na nasa may ear mo lang. Pero sige. Nandito na ko. Just do what you have to do. I didn't let the REALLY loud noise distract me and fired my 3-round loaded rifle. I didn't hit the bull's eye (which was invisible at that distance, by the way) but I got really really close! And my shots were fairly consistent, which meant that I hit what was aiming at. The officer was actually pretty impressed and suggested that I have my dad buy me a gun (which I'm acutually considering). Pero di pa tapos. We had another 7 rounds to fire. Sige, the same procedure. I did a bit worse this time, straying a bit farther, but still pretty close to the bull's eye. I was simply feeling euphoric when I showed my target to the coach (who is an actual Marine) and said I had a pretty good aim. Gusto ko pa ngang umulit eh! Kaso sobrang ingay talaga sa firing range! The ringing in our ears didn't stop until we boarded the bus again. But still it was so much fun. I wouldn't mind doing it again.