Morgen Comrades!

[Warning -- The alignment and sizing on this page is all screwed uP! I promised I tried to fix it, but it is being obnoxious!]

Today has been both long and short. The best way to explain, I'd have to say, is that explaining today can take either very few sentences or it can get pretty complex. Simply put, we all got in a car at 9:00 and five hours later arrived at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Spokane. We did a scavenger hunt in the nearby neighborhood, ate dinner went to mass and then bed.

Of course, that's just the macro picture we're talking about. I can only speak for myself, but I feel like I've done a lot in that fairly basic day.

As I said, our day officially started at 8:30 am, which is when we were to meet at the Moreau Center. I was busy watching Shutter Island instead of packing last night, so I woke up at 7:00 to get the job done. (I'm typing this in Spokane now, which means I didn't forget anything essential for this job) We ate, packed up and left. It was pretty simple.

Our armada consisted of two beastly Physical Plant vans and Jennifer's car. I was one of the lucky few to have the privledge of riding in her car. The vans lacked any and all electronic equipment. The cigarette lighter was jammed in and there was no tape player. Therefor all of modern humanity's hard work toward the Ipod was rendered useless and the poor people in van # 2 suffered beyond comprehension. On the other hand, I subjected my car to the wonders (or evils) of my Ipod. I played a lot of Jeff Bridge's music from Crazy Heart (which won best musical soundtrack!!) and a bunch of country, Disney, 90s, etc.. I'm not sure who suffered more. Haha You can see the two tanks here in the picture. Charlie is driving the blue one and Emily is bringing up the rear in the white one.

Five hours and one (!!!) pit-stop later we were in Spokane. Talk about a dedicated crew! I literally held back three bottles of Treetop juice an hour past all that is natural (two questions. Does that make sense and will that cause damage??). We passed through the always beautiful Gorge and the wind farms that are now becoming almost a symbol of "going green." I snapped a couple pictures and they turned out better than I thought they would.

Our first task once we got to Spokane was to explore the surrounding neighborhood for an hour and a half, while the dinner group cooked us food. What began as somewhat of a competition turned into mostly a walk around and have fun couple hours. We were supposed to do a number of thing including: find a menu for a restaurant, find some Gonzaga paraphernalia, do a good deed, find some random stuff, etc.

My group (Katie, Brian S, Leslie & Myself) found a fire hydrant painted the colors of either the Zags or WSU. We then picked between two directions in the road and ran off trying to find a restaurant. One of the groups beat us to Papa Murphys, so we went next door to Pete's Pizza and got a picture with a nice man named Calvin. He told us where the local Habitat for Humanity offices are and we left happy to find our good deed.

We saw a plastic bag up in a tree and threw a few rocks at it before we realized the possibility of hitting an oncoming car. We left the bag in the tree, but we also left inspired. At that moment we became team I spy trash. (no, that is not lame) We needed to find a bag and our bag search led us down streets, to a school and eventually onto a trail and into the woods.

We completely stumbled upon the fact that we were living next to a very scenic valley here in Spokane. Down below there is a large river and a bridge crossing it. The sun was also setting and the air was warm. It was very nice indeed. We had found a bag by then and we were collecting trash along the way.

We had one of those big black garbage bags and by the end of our trip it was filled with all kinds of goodies. We even found a smashed DVD player to go with all the newspapers, cans and cardboard. Toward the end of our trash gathering journey, we stumbled upon the "shelter" of a homeless person. It was almost inspiring to be reminded in this way of the reason we are here this week. We cleaned up around the site and left some money (we found the money nearby) on the blankets. Brian was the courageous one to climb under the brush to reach the sleeping location.

We found out today that we will be eating a number of meals at Gonzaga University this week. On one hand that means free food, but on the other it means eating in our rival's cafeteria!! Yuck, Ha... it's probably good though. I'll let you know tomorrow.

I'm literally up past our bedtime which is set at 11:00. We have to be up tomorrow at 7:00 am and at the work site by 8:30. So, thus it begins the last day my back won't be sore. A revoir!

~Official Historian C.C.MMX