Just when I think I have gotten used to my life here, something ridiculous always happens and I am left baffled again by the amount of odd situations that arise.
Every week, we eat breakfast and have devotion in small groups. During last week's breakfast, the doorbell rang. In our house of 25+ people, this is a very normal occurrence, so usually someone opens the window above the door to check who is there, and lets the person know that we will be down in a minute. Our front door is a few flights of stairs down, so sometimes the poor delivery man has to wait in the cold for a few minutes.
So at approximately 10:30 a.m., our doorbell rang and one of the house members, Katie, went to the window. Take note that Katie was wearing a woven poncho (or more commonly described in America as a "drug rug"). So she went to the window, opened it up, looked down, realized that it was the police, gave them a few seconds of a blank stare, and promptly closed the window.
"Guys, the police are here!"
Two of our guys and our house mom, Kimberly, went downstairs to open the door for the police. Turns out, the neighbors had called the cops on us due to a suspicion that we had a marijuana plantation in our house.
I don't know about everyone back in the States, but I find this quite comical. Think of our situation first from the inside point-of-view. We live in a Christian community in this great, big house of 25+ young people, all between the ages of 18 and 30. We all have crazy schedules at two different hostels, and there's always something different going on in our house. We're all very passionate and excited individuals, so if you put us all in one space, it has the potential to be very, very loud. We're so excited to live in such a cool city and we love to eat... a lot. Dance parties are a daily occurrence.
Now from the outside perspective. Our neighbors must think such strange things. 25+ young people are constantly coming and going from this huge house in the middle of Amsterdam. We have these ridiculously huge food deliveries every week and gosh dangit, we can be so loud! The windows are so huge and sometimes we catch people looking in on us from across the street when we are in the middle of worshiping Jesus, or having a strange-looking dance party in the laundry room. Did I mention that we're always coming and going at all times of the day and night?
Goodness, I can definitely understand why our neighbors are so suspicious of us! We have all been laughing about this for days. We have an infinite list of reasons why they may suspect us of growing weed, and what is the most funny to us is that it's false and we just keep confusing them even more.
I have just come to accept the fact that my life here is not "normal" and I will not go through a day without one of these crazy situations. This will make for many great stories when I come home, though.
I am not entirely sure if it's normal to see look-a-likes of people when living abroad, but I see the most random people in the most random places. For example, I saw Mrs. Kay, my 8th grade geometry teacher in H&M. Of course it wasn't Mrs. Kay, but I see people like this all the time. I also saw Johnny Long, my neighbor running through the park the other day.
I think it's my subconscious telling me that I miss home. Although, I don't need my subconscious to tell me that I'm homesick because, let's face it. I miss everyone!
