On Saturday-night hostels and Sunday mornings

Last night I stayed at Sweet Peas Hostel in downtown Asheville. It was awesome! I met lots of new people and had some interesting conversations; I made friends with Eleanor (who's on vacation from England) and Scott (who's from the Raleigh/Triangle area), and we talked about politics and existentialism and all the good reasons not to go out on a Saturday night. (The most compelling being "It's almost midnight" for them and "I'm not old enough to be let in anywhere" for me.)

I really like the hostel-living experience. It's a bit more expensive than renting in the long run, but there are loads of people to meet and the place itself was nice. (The shower was gloriously warm.) The people tended to be mostly around my age or a little older (most of them were surprised I wasn't 21 yet), so that made it a lot easier to connect.

One of the guys who was a few years older than the median pointed out that even though there was a flatscreen TV in the common area and he'd been there several nights, he'd never seen it turned on. The people in the hostel read instead. (There was a bookshelf with lots of great books! I didn't get to study it much because I was only there the one night though.)

Downtown Asheville on a Saturday is a pretty hopping place as well. There are people everywhere (families during the day and friend groups of various ages at night). Everyone seemed to be having a good time and I felt comfortable wandering around for no particular reason.

This morning I got up early (before almost everyone) to leave, and after checking out (which consisted of returning the key and putting the linens in the laundry room), I went to a morning service at Missio Dei, which is a nondenominational church that meets in an older church building. The praise band had a banjo in it, and the music as a whole seemed to have a bit more of a folksy feel that I'm going to theorize is an Appalachain thing. The preacher was young (I mean, probably thirties) and preached a message that seemed orthodox-evangelical and drew from historical scholarship for context. The body of the sermon was from Mark 12, where a scribe approaches Jesus and asks what the greatest commandment is.

I met a couple who had been going there for a couple of months, and who told me they actually attended three different churches. They have a house church that meets on Saturday out of their home in Weaverville, they go to Missio Dei in the morning (I went to the 9 o'clock service) and then go to Highland Christian Church later on. (Something I just realized: I ran into a similar name (Highlands) a couple days ago while reading the Jeff Chu book "Does Jesus Really Love Me?" in a section about a church in Denver, CO. I think the two churches aren't related but I'm not sure. I'll need to go there for church some time soon regardless.)

Anyway, the couple told me that they were having a dinner on Tuesday for a men's bible study sort of thing, and they invited me. That sounds like a good opportunity to take advantage of. I may also want to go to their house church the Saturday after next.

I'm going to move into a more permanent place in an hour or two. Currently I'm stealing WiFi from McDonald's and sitting in a Taco Bell in Candler to write this post. I guess I'll have to make sure to go by that McDonald's sometime so I'm not mooching.