fun trip

Here's an old blog entry I forgot to publish.


Moving crises aside, I wanted to share more about my trip to Iowa and Chicago. The cool thing about the Iowa part of the trip, is that so many of the kind of things I associate with my Iowa experience kept happening. For instance, the first night we were there, Jennifer and I accidentally bumped into friends of mine. We had gone out to eat, and were returning to the Wesley Center for the night (we were staying at Leeann's). As we went up the stairs, we heard music, and saw the main room decked out with candles, and I curiously peeked in. (Jennifer, who was exausted, headed on upstairs) I looked to see if I recognized anybody, because I knew that my friend Gail attends a tango group in the Center. Sure enough, she was sitting along the wall, dressed in pretty tango-appropriate clothes. When she finally saw me, she let out a cry of surprise, and I came in and crashed the tango party for a while. I told her that I meant to meet up with our mutual friend Marsha, and she mentioned that Marsha was preaching the next day at a nearby church. After catching up a little, I headed back upstairs, with directions to the next morning's destination in my hand.

The next day I listened to Marsha preach, and was struck by how utopian her little town is (Mount Pleasant, just outside Iowa City). It's a small rural town of liberals who eat organic food (well, I assume they were liberals, as they laughed at her Haliburton joke). It doesn't seem crazy to be an optimist in Iowa. She preached on the "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" verse. Marsha's sermons are always so thoughtful - they turn an issue around on all sides, and she never asks you to accept anything at face value. She differeniated beautifully between the concepts of having useful goals, and having goals that run your life. She manages to say something concrete without saying something over-simplified. What a gift!

That afternoon Jennifer and I went hiking, then checked out my old stomping grounds. In the music building, we ran into Aaron, a conducting class buddy. We later met up with a friend of mine, Matt, who had just been to the Russian music concert (which I had considered attending). He was with a woman from another country (i have NO clue which, her accent was hard to define), and when I told the story about seeing Aaron, she knew who I was talking about! These chance meetings, and coincidences seem to happen all the time in Iowa City. Plus there's always someone from another country to meet and an unusual concert to attend. Somehow, when you're feeling low, something surprising will happen. Like when you're feeling lonely, and are thinking that everyone has moved away, you'll walk up the stairs to the place where you sleep, and suddenly see an old friend, waiting her turn for the tango.