It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I don't mean to use all these literary classics as blog intros, but they seem to fit. Maybe that's why they're classics after all.

So this weekend was really great, really bad, and really average at the same time. First of all, the great. We had two wonderful times of fellowship with the young people of the church. They have been meeting once a month on a Saturday night for games and worship and this was their weekend. I didn't count how many were there, but it was around 10 or 12, a strong group for this part of the world. They really seemed to have a great time. I say "seemed" because I have yet to learn enough language to really understand what the heck is going on most the time when in big groups. More importantly though, you could see a few of them opening up a little during our prayer time. This is important because, as my roommate has been explaining to me, the young people in this church struggle with fellowship because they are so formal with each other. They have a hard time opening up and being real with each other. Which is why my roomie has decided to invite all the youngsters (when I say this, I mean anyone from 18-35 who's single) over to our place for a meal and fellowship time every other Sunday night. Again, it was a wonderful time of fellowship. Also, after a month and a half of barely a cloud, we've had rain four or five days in the past week and it has turned cool. Nice, cool, dreary, overcast days. I love it. And in case you're unfortunate enough not to have access to ESPN or TigerNet, Clemson did win this weekend. Huge. 52-7. We scored all 7 of our touchdowns rushing the ball, picking up over 300 yards on the ground. And to go along with our dominating performance, Boston College (oh how I hate them) lost to NC State on a last second TD pass. That means realisticly, we decide if we go to the ACC championship or not. BC still has to go to Miami and FSU and is going to host VT later in the year. They will lose at least one of those, probably two, possibly all three. So as long as we can keep winning, we should find ourselves in Jacksonville for a shot at a conference title.

Some of the bad. Well, we finally heard from the guy visiting the Islamic teacher. He is going to continue to see him, and he didn't come to church. He did come to our social thing Sunday night, but did not partake of the Lord's Supper because, in his own words, he is "unsure." It doesn't sound good at all. I found out some other things today that I shouldn't post on the web for everyone to read, but it wasn't good news. It sounds like he may be getting close to being "gone." Obviously it takes a lot to be totally "gone" but he's getting very close to being cast out of the fellowship of people here. It sounds like he is really jumping off the deep end with the Islamic stuff too, but we'll see. On a less serious note, and not nearly AS bad, me and the roomie cleaned the whole house Saturday. I don't ever remember spending that much time cleaning. These people really are clean freaks and even though my roommate claims to be your average bachelor, he's probably one of the cleanest people I've ever lived with. That makes things hard.

Some of the average. I never thought I'd say this, but I watched Fiddler on the Roof the other night. For whatever reason it is my roommate's favorite movie (yes I am living with a guy). He says the people here just really love the movie, that they can relate to a lot of it. Whatever. I think it's safe to say, it won't be making my favorites list anytime soon. Feel free to laugh and make jokes too, I know I would.

Just your average weekend in Central Asia.