catching up

hey guys, well im back. its pritty good to be home. doing lotsa stuff with lotsa friends and everything. keeping pritty busy. the night i got home tirzah jordan cameron and lillian were waiting for me with a decorated house and lotsa candies and goodies. that was a pritty good suprise. so we talked for about an hour or two. (i didnt get home till 2 so it was already late) but then we drove around town till about 5:30-6. i dont know how much fun they had, tirzah fell asleep, but i had a great time talking to them and listening to my favorite songs. eventually tirzah and cameron went home, and jordan left about 630. and lillian and i talked till about 7. after they all left i went downstairs and read blogs and stuff, then ate breakfast with my parents. joe called around lunch and i had to go over and see him. good times. i finally got home around 3 and fell asleep instantly on the arm of the coutch. i slept till 9 the next morning. they couldnt even wake me up for dinner. great times.

since then ive done a few things with everybody. just whatever really. went to joes, hung out at starbucks and the levee, got a family portrat done. adrienne got home yesterday so it was a welcome reunion. she had flown to CA for my graduation cerimonies, and that was a great suprise. it was so good to see her, but we didnt really get to talk a ton cause i was talking with my family and everyone on the 5 hours liberty thursaday, and friday she had to leave immediatly after the cerimony. but im so happy she could be there at least. i have to say that shes shuch a wonderful girlfriend. she wrote me everyday the entire time i was at bootcamp. and you have no idea how special letters are to get. it was really good to see her yesterday and catch up and everything.

so yeah, thought id update, catch you up on what ive been doing while home. if you wanna hear about bootcamp,, well im not gonna write anymore about it, but call me or maybe we can get together and ill let you know whatever you want to hear about.


heres some pictures of my eagle globe and anchor cerimony (thurs was when i became a marine) and graduation. you can tell wich ones wich cause i wore different hats.
http://www.abednegobeads.com/jared_grad/

the return

the boys are back in town.
-pvt jared walsh

heck yes.

Letter dated 11-2-06

Dear family,
I guess the time is drawing near. Two weeks and I'll see you guys. It finally is starting to seem close. If you have any Halloween candy left over feel free to bring it along. Its pretty insane what some guys families will be bringing them. I know they'll probably get sick and puke. I think a lot of people are planning on McDonalds. I think a vanilla coke and snickers (along with anything else you want to bring) should be sufficient.
I'm still here at medical. This morning I have a followup after phys. therapy. Its still not all better but it is better. I want to go back on full duty (cause its back to be on light duty a lot) but full duty means I run and everything and I'm not positive its healed enough for that, so a day or two of LD would be ideal. But I'm missing our uniform fitting this morning which means I'll have to make it up sometime. Medical definitely has its drawbacks. Its real depressing talking to some of the guys. One guy was initially from our platoon, he got dropped and was in medical hold the whole time we were up north. Lots of people are there longer. I've been pretty luck so far, I haven't gotten any stress fractures or anything.
Other than that theres not a whole lot to tell. I've been sitting around a lot as gear guard when the platoon goes off to march. Yesterday, I was gear guard for another platoon house (as part of team week) and got to talking to a guy named Stocktill. I had a good time listening to some of his stories, and it turns out he's from Springfield, MO, so he was giving me a list of all the good restaurants to send to Adrienne. I doubt she goes out to eat much, but its still was fun for him, I think. Then a DI came in and yelled at us for "smoking and joking" at our post. Whoops. Its cool. You can tell you've come a ways when you're not afraid of the DIs anymore. You still avoid them as much as you can, its no fun, but you just put up with it. Anyway the DIs can't IT me while I'm light duty. :-) They can add me to a list though. Well, I think I've run out of things to talk about. I'll write later. Love you. Jared

Letter dated 10-30-06

Hey family,
Guess where I am. I made my way back to medical. The good things is that its not because I'm sick, I just pulled my groin. Yeah..ouch. It seems the DI's have taken a liking to tearing up the house or rather, having us do it. Yesterday we had about an hour before church where we had nothing to do, so the DI's decided to play. First it was "2 sheets and a blanket" on line. Thats pretty much how we always start playing. Then we threw them in a pile. Then came the call to "put our locks in our pockets," then we lift our footlockers up, and flip them over. Then we're told to run back and forth dragging our feet. Then we got our matresses on line and threw them in the middle. Then we do some other stuff and then we're told to get our matresses and put them back on the rack, then off, then on, and so on and so forth. It was about then I guess. My rack is the top bunk, so it was pretty awkward to get the heavy, floppy matress on and off. I guess I was lifting it some pretty creative ways or something. It wasn't bad at first, I thought it was just a cramp, but after lunch I could barely walk. We were scheduled to have about 4 hours of drill, and even an hour of drill is tiring. Luckily, the DI saw me and had me be gear guard at the house. Four hours of standing at front post was no picnic either, but was certainly the lesser of evils. Anyway, I can walk with a pretty good limp today after sleep, but I'll probably get some Tylenol and light duty today, maybe tomorrow, cause theres no way I can PT. Its okay though. I got to eat breakfast without a DI (early chow) which was good. We had gotten condiment priviledges taken away about a week ago. Someone took peanut butter into the house. So no more condiments. Now, we get unlimited bread here, so most people get the majority of their food from that. I got to the point where I'd have 15 packs a day (like the size of catsup packs) but all that got taken away. It was pretty devestating for most of us. But anyway, I got PBJ sandwhiches this morning. I was happy. So going to medical has its benefits, definitely.
In other news, letsee, we had the time change Sunday morning which was awesome. We get an extra hour of sleep Sat. nights for Sunday, actually the extra hour is in the morning. And on top of that we got an extra hour from the time change. So we got 10 hours that night. That's probably why the DI was tearing the house apart. It was nice, though.
Well, I just got back from a checkup thing. Still at medical. They said I threw my hip bones out of alignment and thats stressing the muscle. So I got to lay down for 20 min. and take a nap while icing my let. Twas a good deal, I think. Now I'm on light duty for a couple days and will go back for "therapuedic" sessions tomorrow and Thursday. I should be good by tomorrow though, judging from how much better I felt after sleeping last night. Their giving me Tylenol just in case, though. Its actually gonna be the 2nd medication I'm taking now. Apparently theres been a strep throat outbreak here, and any sickness like that gets mutated and supersized in rec. training. So they actually just handed out antibiotics to everyone in 3rd phase so we won't get sick and bring it back home. I've never seen a prescription bottle so big. But two a day for the rest of bootcamp. Its good cause I was starting to cough a little just before we got it. I think this is one medication I'm gonna keep taking. I've learned its nice to be healthy.
Just about the only other thing I can think of to report is that we had a "driver's safety" class. It was just like drivers ed. We slept just as much, too. I'm sure Rachel knows the feeling well.
So today everyone else is gonna PT. I'm probably gonna stand front post. I don't know what else will happen in the near future. Its team week so we get odd jobs around the base. Its probably real good I got light duty this week. We'll see. Love you, keep writing! I'll see you in not too much longer. Jared

Letter dated 10-28-06

Hey family,
Well, an interesting series of events took place in the past couple days regarding swim qualifications. I think I wrote you right before swim qual 2. You might be able to tell in that letter that it was gonna be hard, but I think I was still a little too overconfident in my abilities. I got about halfway and learned that its a bad thing not to be able to keep your head above water. I was close to the side so I quickly got to it and clung to it for awhile till I was told to get out. I felt pretty miserable. Not only was I supposed to pass the qual for my MOS, but I swam to the side instead of getting rescued, therefore I quit. It wasn't a good day. I had spent a bit of time swimming with Jordan too, so I was also thinking, "Man, now I have to go back and tell him I couldn't make it across the pool." It sucked for a few different reasons. So I pretty much resigned myself to the idea of being a combat engineer and figured I was even more at the mercy of the Marine Corps to decide what I do. I knew I'd get another chance the next day, but if I couldn't make it halfway through the first one (event) I knew there was no hope for getting that done, and the second event on top of it. But I'd try. I figured this time I'd either make it across, or get drug out by a swim instructor. I wasn't gonna quit. So the next day rolled in and as I waited to get in the water I was doing some praying. Then they got us together and gave us about a 2 min. class on how to do it on our backs and stuff. Well, I gotta tell you it was a whole lot easier the second time around and I passed...fairly easily. It was a good day. The rest of the day was pretty cool cause we had Ssgt. Massy. He's a bit more relaxed than the other DI's and can be pretty funny. During hygiene inspection he cracked the whole platoon up (muffled laughter) by yelling at a recruit who didn't have his flipflops on saying he'd get "foot fungus" over and over, each time bending over getting in the recruit's face. The recruit got scared stupid, but the rest of us (including Ssgt. Massy) could barely contain themselves. It was that kind of rare, lighthearted night. Later during prayer time the Ssgt had to say something and swore, so he paused and stated he wouldn't swear cause we were in the middle of praying. The 2nd word he said he swore, so he paused and tried to say it over, using a different swear word. He stumbled over himself for the rest of the time, getting himself confused over what he was saying and accidently swearing about 15 more times. Everyone was laughing by the end and I don't think he ever finished what he was saying. Life is slowly getting more relaxed now that we're 3rd phase.

I've been sorta trying to think about what I'm gonna do when I get home, how I'll divide my time up. I know I'll probably spend one night/evening at Joe's and probably and evening at Adrienne's, but I'll try to have friends over to our house as much as possible. I also figured that depending on Dad's work schedule and if its allowed, I'd like to go to work with him for a little bit at least. An I'll spend as many meals at home as possible (maybe take Adrienne out though). Oh yeah, and if you're looking for food suggestions, bug bread. That would definitely be good. Dorito's and grapes, too. Well, time to go. I'll write you later. Love and miss you. Jared
P.S. Dad, I've never been much of a coffee drinker, but almost everyday (especially up north) I wish for a cup, so yes, I can't wait to try your stuff.