My office sits on the corner of Kimball and Park Lane, just down the road from Hoover Middle School on the southern side of Waterloo. I've got a wall of windows to the north and a wall of windows to the west which allow me a great view of what's going on outside.
Normally it's pretty quiet around the office - usually just me, maybe with a few of my staff dipping in and out. But around three in the afternoon every day, it gets noisy - and not because of what's going on inside the office. It's what's going on outside.
Hoover lets out at around this time. And because of the unseasonably warm weather, kids are walking home.
At the time of me writing this, there 10 kids from Hoover walking down the sidewalk towards the neighborhoods across Kimball - the exact same neighborhood that I grew up in.
Five white kids. Five black kids. All yelling, screaming, joking, playfully pushing and shoving, relating.
Being from here, it's easy to think that this city hasn't changed in forever. But it has. Diversity is everywhere. I'm more and more amazed at how I used to simply not see it.
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