Camp Hope

More on Camp Hope. The camp was once a Middle School, so you can imagine what it generally would look like. There are two floors, the first floor consisting of the front office, two sets of bathrooms, a lounge, and all of the rooms where volunteers are staying (which were once classrooms). On the second floor are some more rooms, bathrooms, as well as the showers. There are also lockers which we are free to use if we've got locks. Outside of the main building across the wide walkway/courtyard-esk area is the dining hall which is its own building, and next to that is the laundry room.

Our team is living and sleeping in one of the rooms on the first floor. We're staying with one other Perry Point team, another team from our unit: Badger 5. They are here for the next two months working for Habitat for Humanity. Together we have appropriately named ourselves Badger 11. I suggested Badger 5.5 as an average to represent us more accurately, but the more and more I see it the more is sounds like an operating system or software.

Anyway, we are staying in the room with a couple of other NCCC teams from the Fall Sacramento campus, who have been here for a month already. They're currently on their second round and this their third project.



Overall, I'd say there are about 40 people in this room, sleeping in bunk cots. Fortunately I sleep fairly easily. The hardest part for me has been getting off an on my top bunk night and morning, as I have to climb on four different cots on either side of me to get up there, especially when my neighbors are sleeping.

This has all just proven to me how important it is to pack lightly. We've all brought our red bag, a sleeping bag, and a smaller bag for the two months, and even that almost seems like too much now that I'm here.

Breakfast and dinner is served at the camp in shifts, and the volunteers are the ones who set-up, clean-up, and help serve. All or most of the food is donated. For lunch, since we're on site, we pack it up in the morning.

So that's Camp Hope. But that's not where I am right now. More on that later.