Week two: Raring to go

11:55am Monday 7th April 2008

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After two weeks at home on Easter leave, continuing our 18th birthday celebrations, spending our first Navy pay and keeping our fitness levels up, we are now back at Raleigh raring to go.

We couldn't wait to get back and it was great on Sunday catching up with all our new mates.

The focus of this week has been learning how to march properly or as our instructor calls it 'synchronised walking'.

It was hard getting the hang of it at first but marching has really helped to pull us all together as a team.

On Friday we made our debut as platoons in the passing-out-parade for the latest recruits to complete the course.

We were really nervous, but very proud. When the band starts playing it really makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

It was a real inspiration to see the passing-out classes on parade and it's made us want to succeed even more, so that we will be in their position in seven weeks time.

There's also been some physical training this week.

We've been out running as a class and doing sit-ups and press-ups.

As our professional training as divers is very physically demanding we've been given extra phys on Tuesday and Thursday nights, which has been great as it is an aspect of training we really enjoy.

The hardest part of training so far has certainly been the cleaning and ironing - something we have never had to do for ourselves before.

We've been issued with three shirts and three pairs of trousers.

It does get washed for us, but as you can imagine we have to supplement this by hand-washing and ironing ourselves.

We also have other bits of kit like a pair of shorts, six pairs socks, towels etc, which we have to wash ourselves by hand.

Next week we have our POs (Petty Officers) kit inspection, when he will make sure that we are all keeping our kit up to scratch and it is folded away properly in our lockers. We have all been working together, helping each other to make sure we are doing the best we can. We aim to pass, but as we are all still learning apparently the pass rate is very low.

All in all it's been a great week - the team is getting stronger and we are learning more and more every day.