Oh Adventist World, How Small Thou Art

Seriously. How small can it be? I sit in church with hundred of people each week, roam the campus of a thousand or so, without being related or even know one person. However, I can climb onto a plane, fly 15 hours and end up half-way across the world, and know, not just one person, but two people by association.

Yesterday, as Kelsey and I were flipping through pictures, I recognized this girl in one of them. “Oh oh oh! I know her! Who is that?!”

“My brother’s girlfriend.”

I kinda got this puzzled expression on my face and said, “omg, no way! You’re brother is THAT Jesse?!” She showed me a picture of him, and yup, sure was.

I, what I would consider against all odds, had gone on a random picnic with a few of my friends, when her brother Jesse and his girlfriend happened to swing by.

Then, in a much more unbelievable connection happened. I was in Rebecca’s room today. We were talking about how her roommate is gone until Monday night because of this wedding in Romania. And I go “Romania, uh? I can say like 3 phrases that my roommate from Andrews taught me.” Before this, I knew Rebecca’s roommate was named Mia, and I knew that Iustina (My roommate from Andrews) had a German cousin named Mia, who had a sister Lilly. Mia had pictures of her sister up in the room, and I had initially had this sense of familiarity, but I ignored it. So I’m about to leave Rebecca’s room, when suddenly I see this picture out of the cornor of my eye. OH MY WORD. It was Iustina!!! There she is, my roommate from 3 years ago, staring back at me IN A PICTURE THAT HAD ONCE HUNG IN MY DORM ROOM AT ANDREWS. I told Rebeca that if Mia was at a wedding in Romania that there was a really good chance Iustina was there. She goes, “wow, what are the odds that you’re old roommate would be 8 hours away from you on the other side of the world?” Seriously, what ARE the odds? Well in the Adventist world…apparently pretty high.

Today we went to a hot spring. Kinda like Evan’s plunge, but not as amusement parkish...ok the two have nothing in common except the hot spring. It was more of a spa. It was really nice, but the scenry hurt my eyes at times lol. There was a lot of—closeness—in the pool. Couples, yep, everywhere. Advert eyes. Opps, more couples, Ok, let’s move pools…oh bad idea. Besides that little detail, many of the woman simply swim in their underwear and bras, and I spotted a few guys swimming in only their boxers. I find in odd that they allow people to swim in their underwear, but wouldn’t let one of the girls in our group wear a T-shirt into the pool, odd. But apparently the shirt is a hazard because it’s heavy….I would beg to differ that the other could also be a hazard of some sort…lol. We took der Zug there (the train). It took about 20 minutes, and then we spent 4 hours there.

While there we all got this wrist band key things. You could buy things by scanning them, open and close your locker by scanning them, get a massage by scanning them, and then, when you left the facility for the day, the cashier in the lobby scanned that sucker on last time and you paid her the total.

I called my mom and dad for the first time since I’ve been here. I called about 12:30pm, my time…yeah about 5:30am their time. I considered the time difference, but knew dad worked late and knew I wouldn’t be getting back from the pool until 7. They did a nice job of not acting too upset, I was almost convinced ;). I wanted to wish dad a happy Father’s Day..but naturally I forgot, so Happy Father’s Day dad! Love you!

When we got back from the pool, we watched a movie in this little room, with a name I cannot pronounce. We watched a movie, which name I also cannot pronounce. Something about someone winning something a long time ago. Luckily, they put English subtitles on. I tried to follow along in German as well as I could, but I don’t think the words “Deustchland, bitte, Danke, Morgen, and Football” would have gotten me far.

Afterwards, I came back to the dorm, diligently finished the homework I had started this morning. Tomorrow is back to the old grindstone of classes. We will have a different teacher for the day tomorrow, so that should be interesting.

Oh yeah. I never got a chance to write about church! Again, understood about…hmm….1/5% of it. Not terribly interesting lol. It was communion, we stood and knelt about 9 times. I thought it was interesting how the pastor and the elders passed out the bread and the juice, not the deacons. I rather liked the symbolism, it felt more like the leaders of the church were showing their servitude side.

Before church, we had Sabbath School. We were all in the sanctuary. A guy would show and read this questions off a powerpoint slide, and then the pews would discuss it. The pastor ended up being directly in front of us, and took pity on our English speaking selves. He read translated the questions for us and then asked us our opinions. The topic was being vegentrain, vegan or eating meat. It was kinda funny because he seemed to be making fun of the guy up front. Saying things like “Meat is bad for you—that’s what the guy up front is saying…I say I feel better after eating a steak!” hahah. He shook my hand after he found out I wasn’t a vegetarian…good guy. He’s big on chicken, so I figured dad would approve.

The church is beautiful, modern, and two walls of sliding glass doors that lead outside. Beautiful, light, breezy. They left the doors open to get a little breeze…and look what it drug in, a cat! Yep, in the middle of the sermon, the pastor quits talking, and you see this other man walk to the front, lean over, and bring up a cat lol.

Their song service is lead by a wonderful organist. The organ has this beautiful mellow sound to it. Not the sharp, harsh sounds like a lot of big pipe organs do, like at Union.

Special music was done by Lousia, one of my teachers. She plays the violin beautifully. I haven’t had a violin put me in a day dream like that since Sveta spend the summer in Sioux Falls, my 8^th grade year. For the postlude, Lousia and two others played a violin trio, magnificent. I would buy their CD in a heartbeat. I miss playing the saxophone and piano…