My-oh-my...
What a week. I slept a total of about 5 hours since Tuesday, spent about 36 hours training woodland fighting and how to perform a proper drop from a helicopter, won some beer with eating a whole, large piece of garlic, was publicly honored for my attitude (in front of the entire group!), ran 8km in just below 30 minutes - cross-country, that is! - and I'm still awake.
Phew.

Woodland fighting was fun, even though it took place after a night with only about 90 minutes of sleep ("a few" fence control walks - "a few" being 14 in 24 hours, plus a total of 6 hours guarding the main gate at the base); but the heli drop was just it!! I've never done anything as exciting, and I've done a lot of crazy shit already!!
It was just like in the movies: heli drops, everyone enters within about 10-20 seconds, heli takes off again, flies to the drop zone, barely touches the ground, everyone jumps off while it's still half-way in the air and then it's all about swarming about and finding a spot to cover the next group that is landing approximately 5 minutes later; all that while somewhere in the background you hear machinegun-fire and some (faked) grenade and artillery booms. Wargames at their best...
After all the time out in the woods, they even transported us back to base with the helis, which rocked. Was rather cool because we didn't have to do the 15km hike, too. ; p

All in all, I can only say I'm glad I decided to join the paratroopers and I'm proud to have achieved all this so far. It just feels good to be out there there getting pretty tough training that just plainly rocks and is exactly what I expected from my army time.

So much to that, more to come, but it'll take time.