The Base

Ok, so now that I'm coming home in two weeks (from today! I can't believe it!), I thought some of you might be interested to see what the place looks like where I live :-). Gunna and I share the best room on the girls' floor (2nd floor). It's the largest, and it's at the end of the hall, so we don't hear people when they get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom :-). There are also stairs right next to our room from the balcony down to the ground floor outside. We often leave our door to the balcony cracked open at night because it gets too stuffy otherwise. So people have come to know this about us, and at least once a week we get someone (from the base, no other intruders!) coming through our room in the middle of the night because all the other doors are locked. Though awkward at times, we see this as a community service, and are happy to bring this contribution to the base :-). There are three floors on the base, as well as an attic and a basement. The basement is where we do our laundry, which is a little less than a dollar a load for both wash and dry. The first floor is all common area: the reception area, the classroom, the kitchen, the living room, and the dining hall. All the walls facing the sea have full-sized windows so we can enjoy the gorgeous view at all times. The second floor, as previously mentioned, is the girls' rooms. Each room has a sink and a mirror, but we share common bathrooms (4 showers and 4 toilets; I've never had a problem sharing with the other 10 girls on our floor). It's really nice to have the sinks in our rooms, though, because we don't have to go to the bathrooms to brush our teeth or wash our faces. The third floor is the guys' floor, and also the staff offices. Unlike my DTS in Hawaii, where guys were on the bottom floor and weren't allowed to come up past the second step to the girls' floor, there aren't any rules about staying out of guys'/girls' rooms here. I've heard this base is known for being one of the most easy-going in YWAM, which is really nice, especially for people like us who have pretty strong internal discipline and boundaries :-). Connected to the main base building are the staff rooms, for which there are also no restrictions about students entering...hehe. We'll just say that pranks are not infrequent. So that's the skinny on this place. Enjoy the pictures!