Relearning to relax

After the intensity of the topics we discussed over the past week, the fellowship leaders took us to a resort in Virginia for a couple days to relax. It's a campus full of cottages, a pool, a gym, tennis courts, bikes and other amenities. There is a course of paths that circles out through rolling fields by a couple of lakes.

I did some running and a lot of sitting by the pool. We had epic volley ball and poker games, the latter of which ironically I was winning until the very end.

The great thing about about putting people from two cultures with two different languages together is that you get this sort of constant language exchange. We would explain words like "wacky," "wimp" and "hussy" while they warned against saying "Nacht" (night) without the notorious German guttural pronunciation, since it can sound a lot like nakt (nacked). It's sort of amazing that 20 strangers can come together like this and become friends in such a short time. You develop a certain fondness for many of them, knowing that you might ever see some of them again.

Lesson learned: In poker, you really do have to know when to fold them.