WAKE UP!

You can't escape the sun in Omaha. Hmm, back up - you can't escape the sun anywhere, but DEFINITELY not when you're driving into downtown Omaha in the morning or out to the rest of Nebraska in the afternoon. My commute takes me south in the morning and north in the afternoon, so the sun is shining directly on me both ways, but a few excursions have taken me west at sunset, and let's just say that sunglasses don't really help much.

I think I've already mentioned Omaha being a pretty easy city to navigate, and the sun reminds me of that. Just like Oberlin (by the way, I just realized recently that I must have a thing for cities that begin with "O"), there's a north campus and south campus, except that in Omaha these campuses are two distinct parts of the city - North Omaha and South Omaha.

I've been wanting to write about that for a while. And I'm writing it today because today is one of those days where I don't really know entirely what to do. After-school starts next Monday, so things are about to get busier - but I may have done just about everything I can do to get ready for that, for now, and so...now what?

Well, at 5:30, 2 of my housemates and I are going to go to a North Omaha community meeting called "A New Vision for North Omaha" which is being hosted by Empower Omaha, whose meeting I attended a few Saturdays ago (instead of holding up a sign saying "I am a Christian and I don't want to burn a Quran today"). I want to be there not really to say anything, though maybe we will get the chance to introduce ourselves, but just to represent LVC/LSC as a presence in North Omaha, even though not all of us are working on that side of the city. (I'm a case in point.) Even though my housemates and I may only be in Omaha for a year, there have been volunteers before us and there will be more volunteers after us, who will be working for peace with justice, and I think it's important that we make our presence known...so I'm excited.

And right now, even with a case of the mid-afternoon sleepies, there are so many ideas to dream up, there is so much reading to be done and so much to be grateful for.

Hey - what are you doing right now?

PS. Jackie and Kayleigh updated their blogs on Friday, too - Jackie's entry is complete with more Old Market pictures and a cool comparison regarding the pioneers that came through Omaha, and Kayleigh's sentiments, especially in her middle paragraph, are rather similar to mine.
I'll let you figure out which one is which:
http://homesweetomaha.wordpress.com/
http://www.omahakayleigh.blogspot.com/