As we drive it is almost like driving into another world. The ground starts to roll into hills dappled with light and shadows and the pavement skips from black to pink asphalt. We started to walk around this town, Mission South Dakota, and for one of the first times I am truly the minority. The entire town knows that we are here, we the unfamiliar aliens are intruding on their beauty, their lives, and their hardships. And they have made it clear that we are not here to judge. We the alien do not have the authority to come here and stir around with their beliefs and dreams.

I saw a little girl today. I was told that she wants a father so badly that she pretends that any man she meets is her dad. She doesn’t care what the guy looks like, just as long as he is a man that she can claim as her own. To some people a father is a commodity to be desired. A father is something almost as foreign as these busses of white kids from Michigan who think they know what they are talking about. When I was talking about it later I almost started to cry. I forget sometimes how much I am blessed with what I have been given. I have been given a family with so much love and I have been blessed with enough resources my entire life. I cannot even fathom how much my heart would hurt to live in a dorm two blocks from my house just so I could get three meals a day or because I have problems at home. This little girl to me was the first real face of the pain that people go through.