My Trying Times In The Navy

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MY TRYING TIMES IN THE NAVY Joining the NAVY has been filled with challenges. Distance from family, long deployments, and loss of friends, or shipmates as we call them in the NAVY, are three of the many challenges one faces. When I joined the NAVY, I planned everything out like checking the housing cost in Seattle where I had orders to report as well as the basic housing allowance given to me by the NAVY to get my apartment and moving all of my furniture to Seattle. Unfortunately, it did not go as planned and I was more or less forced to endure four long years! Of my NAVY career alone in the state of Seattle, due to a huge miscommunication and misunderstanding as well as irresponsibility on behalf of my NAVY recruiter. I was told that I would receive the same housing allowance in the state of Seattle as in New York, which is about $2,800 dollars a month if I moved my wife and daughter to Seattle. My family and I would have had big financial issues not to mention that I did not even have the funds to afford a car at that time. By leaving my family behind in New York City, I was able to balance out our budget and cost of living expenses. I was able to see my family only every six months for twelve days of vacation time. I had to see my daughter grow up on Facebook and I missed out on a lot of activities with my family due to the 6,000 miles of loneliness that separated us. The Second, challenge was the long deployments: we were out to sea from six to nine months at a time. For many like me, communication with family and friends was not as easy as I thought. Mail, e-mail, and making phone calls were all frustrating ventures. There were mail deliveries only once a month, e-mail was good only when we had a good internet connection out at sea, and phone calls took forever with the very long lines of my fellow sailors on board waiting to call their loved ones. My third,
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