This round, the challenge is not in the work but rather our living situation. Some of our current challenges are as follows:
- Rather than sleeping in beds we have sleeping bags on the ground. Not that bad until it rains and the ground gets wet and the bags are cold and smelly. Also, our backs are pretty tight and knotted up from all this ground sleeping.
- Fear of bugs! Sleeping with ear plugs in every night can cut this fear down a little bit, but it is still not my favorite.
- Partying Campers! Every day we have new neighbors and often times the park is completely full on the weekends. We work on the weekends and people are usually up partying through the wee hours of the morning.
- Partying Campers! They make our bathrooms pretty disgusting. When you have to share your bathrooms with people who are only there for a night or two, they tend to demolish the accommodations. There is rarely toilet paper, the seats have been carved with messages, the ground is usually covered in mud, and once in a while there while be puke splattered everywhere. It's sick.
- Rain! It has only really rained a few times, but when it does, all of our things get wet. We have to spend the next day removing everything from our tents and laying it out to dry.
Something I posted to the AmeriCorps NCCC Pacific Region Facebook page:
AmeriCorps Blue Seven has been completely rained out of their campsite twice now. Tree People was kind enough to let us stay in one of their yurts in Beverly Hills the last time, but when we came back to our site, we found Heather's tent on the picnic table, and Julie Ann Nicholson and Anna's tent at the bathrooms!
Although it is laughable in retrospect, it can be really hard to see the littlepossessions you have completely soaked and ruined. Blue 7 has been lucky that the majority of our things have just needed drying, but we did take a moment to reflect on how we felt at the time, and how much greater the hurt and devastation must be for hurricane victims.
AmeriCorps NCCC forces people to downsize their possessions to fit in a single red bag. It is difficult to leave behind items that may have previously been the one thing you could turn to for comfort. Much like other teams, Blue 7 has adapted to the camping lifestyle. However, when you finally start to feel comfortable in the wilderness, and then you return to everything you own soaking wet and moldy, there is a certain level of panic and hurt.
Tommy Clifford brought light to the fact that we could relate our team's distraught to natural disaster victims.
"If this affects our team this much, it really makes you think about how people must have felt after Hurricane Katrina. This is only some of the stuff we own, just imagine what it would feel like to have this happen to your entire home." --Tommy Clifford
Although our situation is very minor in comparison, it helped us to feel a small fraction of what hurricane victims might have felt after Katrina or Ike.
Although it is laughable in retrospect, it can be really hard to see the littlepossessions you have completely soaked and ruined. Blue 7 has been lucky that the majority of our things have just needed drying, but we did take a moment to reflect on how we felt at the time, and how much greater the hurt and devastation must be for hurricane victims.
AmeriCorps NCCC forces people to downsize their possessions to fit in a single red bag. It is difficult to leave behind items that may have previously been the one thing you could turn to for comfort. Much like other teams, Blue 7 has adapted to the camping lifestyle. However, when you finally start to feel comfortable in the wilderness, and then you return to everything you own soaking wet and moldy, there is a certain level of panic and hurt.
Tommy Clifford brought light to the fact that we could relate our team's distraught to natural disaster victims.
"If this affects our team this much, it really makes you think about how people must have felt after Hurricane Katrina. This is only some of the stuff we own, just imagine what it would feel like to have this happen to your entire home." --Tommy Clifford
Although our situation is very minor in comparison, it helped us to feel a small fraction of what hurricane victims might have felt after Katrina or Ike.
