The Quad

After visiting the bonfire memorial, we walked around to some notable places on campus. First, we went to the place where Mike and Amanda courted. That was cute. It's fun to see big tough Marines lovin' on their wives! I should know...I married one!! (Yes, be jealous!) Then, we saw Amanda's dorm. And then, here's the real highlight of the day, we went to the Quad. This deserves a whole new paragraph.

For those of you who went to Harding, it's a little difficult to explain what we saw there. Unlike Harding, Texas A&M is a hard-core military school. In fact, when it first opened its doors, I dunno, like 140,000 years ago, it was a military school. As such, it has a huge Corps Cadets program. The Corps is broken down into companies. Kenny was the Commanding Officer his senior year of G-2 (the Gladiators...best unit A&M has ever seen! Um, unfortunately, it doesn't exist anymore. Currently.) Mike was in K-2 (Killers.) Fortunately for us, the Killers are alive and well. I had NO idea what to expect!

Before each homegame, the Corps units all do a parade on the quad. (For those Aggies reading this, please know that this is ALL new to me, so I'm doing my best to describe it. Please overlook any aggregious and fundamental errors!!) The first thing we see are the Cadets of one unit "Wildcatting" in. Basically, they run like they're on fire(in a line) out of their dorm building, hands in the air, and hollering at the tops of their lungs! That was quite a sight to behold!

We went up, next, into the Killer dorm. It was special to me to get to share this time with Mike, particularly. When he got on deck, he started talking to a leader of the current K-2 company. When the guy figure out Mike is a major in the Marine Corps, we were afraid he was going to call the whole unit to attention. That would have been very awkward for all of us! Fortunately, the guy decided not to do that. I got to see the unit's pre-quad rituals. Then, they wildcatted out too. (Um, this could be called Bobcatting...I can't remember, and Kenny's at work! I'm SO sorry!)

After the guys ran out, we broke into one of the freshman's dormrooms. More on that later.

I'm going to be late for Chem lab...just wanted to get some more on "paper" while I had a minute. More to come soon!