Today was an early morning, arriving at Hope around 8
AM. Upon our arrival, we were put to
work immediately doing maintenance work around the headquarters. Some students went inside to move office
furniture and work on painting the hallways of the executive wing of the
building. The others stayed outside to
organize equipment, move unused furniture, hall away garbage, organize and hall
tires, and wash vehicles. After one job was completed, another job was waiting
to be filled. In total, we worked
between four to five hours. While the
work was labor intensive, everyone felt fulfilled and accomplished. With the
prospects of a barbeque on the horizon, we headed to Walmart to pick up some
meat since the dinner was a “bring your own meat” event.
Before starting up the grill, the majority of the students
wanted to get out into the wilderness and hike.
The short, two mile hike to Thunderbird Falls and back was a great warm
up hike for future excursions. However,
the true adventure was reaching the trailhead.
After asking numerous people, taking countless wrong turns and backtracking
over and over, we finally found the path to a beautifully quaint waterfall.
Because of our misadventures with directions, we started the
barbeque an hour and a half later than scheduled. The majority of students got
brats and hot dogs while some others grabbed chicken breasts and veggie
burgers. However, we struggled to get the charcoals started even with the help
of the Irish students and ended up slow cooking the majority of the hotdogs and
brats. Once all the meat had been
cooked, the coals finally caught.
Nevertheless, we still were able to us the grill to roast marshmallows. Two of the European students, one from
England and one from Austria, had never experienced s’mores before. We began by teaching them the ways of
marshmallow preparation and roasting techniques. While we didn’t have chocolate, we used
Nutella as a substitute which worked just as well since the almost the whole
bag of marshmallows was polished off.
As the sun hung in the horizon, students broke into small groups.
Some chatted with the European students. Some went out for a night on the town.
Others stayed in for a laughter filled game of Cards against Humanity.
Tomorrow we will be setting up for the Hope Walk and Roll fundraising
event.
(C) 2014. All photos are the property of Benjamin Bogard. All rights reserved.
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