Right across from the booth, in downtown Omaha, is a stretch of parkway called Gene Leahy Mall. It is not a shopping mall, but rather an urban green space. Lots of people go there to eat lunch, walk their dogs and play. Above, facilitator Lena Richardson sits by the water on the edge of the park, as she sometimes does before heading home from the booth.

We also love the fact that in Omaha, you can see popular bands at half the cost you could in a larger city and in a venue a quarter of the size. We’ve seen some great bands like Animal Collective (below) at an old gymnastics center called the Sokol Auditorium, and we plan to see more.

The Bemis Center (below) is an amazing arts center where artists from around the world live and work through a residency program. It has basically become Omaha’s center for contemporary art, and boasts four gallery spaces of its residents’ work.

Facilitator Jenna Weiss-Berman likes to have her eyelashes extended at the salon across the street from our hotel (pictured above). Just kidding, but she could if she wanted to. It’s an "Omaha first."