growing up adventist.

i might make this a new blog series that i write about from time to time. but it truly is uniquely its own. and i am sure there are plenty of people that are not adventist, but can relate to going to small private schools.

it is one thing to watch napoleon dynamite and just find it to be a quirky off beat comedy, it’s another to watch it and relate to it. and trust me when i say, i would not have had it any other way.

last night i was thinking about high school and those years i spent in choir. i just started to laugh and laugh about the experiences that came from that. one in which i plan to tell you now.

you see when you go to a small private school and sing in a choir – crazy things happen. one of which your school decides that a small choir should still travel around and sing at churches and events and that it is a requirement to go, but on extremely low budgets. which means you end up staying with random families or sleeping on gymnasium floors.

oh the stories that will come from that. but i would like to focus on a time in which our small choir decided to do a choir retreat. to get better at our vocals and learn how to sing as one – so to speak.

on this particular retreat there were two options in which you were divided up. i have my suspicions to why i ended up where i did, but i will leave it at that. there was option 1: condo’s and there was option 2: this lovely motel called the hojo inn. and once the condo’s were full, whoever was left got to go to the hojo.

and just try to guess where i ended up getting to go? was it bright, airy with tennis courts?  no. it was option number 2 where your doors were facing outside, someone had robbed the vending machines which where chained to the wall, and random blood stains encouraged a safe night sleep.

luckily i was with my accomplice in crime – jj. we immediately took in our surroundings, began laughing and asking if calling 911 would just be a safer route to start off with rather than end with? entering our motel room, we found bugs in our shower, lumpy beds, and the ever so present existence of muggy cigarette smoke. it was late, we were hungry and decided to order a pizza – which arrived 2 hours later cold and soggy.

i had no idea how i would sleep that night, but jj and i managed to close our eyes with prayers to God for survival, and just laughing so hard tears were running down our faces.

i must have fallen asleep because it wasn’t until 3 a.m. that i heard it. the voice of God you ask?

no, a drunk woman singing “i believe i can fly” at the top of her lungs, in the room next door to us.

jj and i began laughing, and instead of just trying to fall back to sleep we began singing back up at the top of our lungs.

eventually we all finished with a harmonic ending. and that was it.

we all fell back to sleep.

in the morning we were starving, and had been told breakfast was being served at the condo’s. so we got on the bus with the other unfortunate choir kids that had to stay at the motel, and headed back to the condo.

we could smell waffles with syrup and veggie links cooking, and jj and i began to run to the condo door. we busted through to only see everyone cleaning up.

all that was left was a plate of soggy scrambled eggs dripping through a paper plate. we passed.

the rest of the food had been eaten swiftly by the condo choir kids.

i suppose after their morning tennis game quite the appetite had built.

unlike jj and i, who had spent the early morning hours performing with a drunk lady.