The RV has been sitting at the corner for at least a year, blocking the view of the cross street. Every time I turn the corner I slow down and turn cautiously, and wonder how long until there is an accident there. Last night I was driving back to the house, thinking about a meeting I was a few minutes late for. I looked and saw nothing, turned right, and suddenly I was in the intersection and so was an SUV and I braked and my glasses flew off and I heard a crunch as my little car collided directly with the front driver's side bumper of a GMC Jimmy. I spent the next few minutes pawing frantically through my car for my glasses. People gathered. A fuzzy man shape in a blue shirt emerged from the driver's side of the SUV. He was ok. I was ok. My car was not okay. It still drives but there is a nice big dent in the middle of the front and the hood is crunched up. Jon and Christopher came up and were incredibly supportive. I was issued a citation since the GMC was to my right. My question right now is this: If I could get up to half the ticket removed by going to court for mitigating circumstances (ie. the RV that was blocking my view) is it worth it? I could save up to $70 from my fine.
I really didn't need a car accident right now.

Park fountain

I really should carry a camera with me at all times. Walking back from lunch I saw something that would have made a wonderful photo. The fountain is normally filled with shrieking children and hesitant adults. It stood silent and dry. A Spokane Parks Maintenance truck was parked next to it and orange barricades circled the manhole leading to the underground plumbing. All around the orange barricades a ring of children in still damp bathing suits lined up staring intently at the maintenance worker who shouted down the hole, "Can you hurry up and turn it on down there? I think they're going to through me down the hole in a minute!!"

...........

I woke up feeling despondant this morning. Guatemala trip is over, have to back to work, can't decide whether or not to move out of the house, not sure if they'll let me stay, can't go back to North Dakota for a long long time. I hung out with Jon and two of his friends who go back to elementary school last night. It was fun, but my heart aches for the friends I left behind. Alycia, Lisa, Katie, Krys, Glen, Catherine, Karisa.....especially those I didn't get to see on my trip to ND. Will I ever see you guys again? The future looks like this fuzzy gray empty space again. Am I really going to follow through with this Americorps thing? I'm not really facilitating this Earned Income Tax coalition thing....just showing up at work, sending a few e-mails and pretending to know what I'm doing. I don't WANT this job and didn't in the first place... and yet I applied for it just to have a job of some sort. I just feel lost and hopeless. And it's my fault. It helps somehow to write this all down.

How?

How do you eat a meal of tortillas and rice and an enormous bowl of soup when a little boy with hungry eyes is staring at you from across the room?
How do you fall asleep to a rainstorm knowing you're sleeping dry in a hotel bed while the local pastor and his five kids are in a stick home with a dirt floor that the water is possibly running right through?
How do you return to a materialistic society knowing your brothers and sisters have so little?

Guatemala

I signed onto the 12th delegation from the Presbytery of the Inland Northwest to the Mayan K'ekchi churches in Guatemala. I leave tomorrow with nine other people. We'll be gone until the 18th of August. I fully expect my eyes to be opened and my views of the world to be completely rearranged. I know there is deep poverty in this world, but have I ever REALLY looked poverty in the face? I've heard the heart breaking stories from someone very dear to my heart who has been to Guatemala twice. I've seen the sorrow in his eyes as he speaks of the people he met. Now I go to see for myself. I pray that I may be changed. I pray that somehow I might make some difference in this dark world. Or rather, I pray that God, would make some difference through me.
Right now I'm still struggling to pack.
Father...prepare me.