Monday, November 15, 2004

... right here in Hollywood

Well, if you read my previous entry, we finished that Amish video today in class. Overall the documentary was pretty good, worth the watch in my opinion. At the very end it says that about 90% of people come back to join the Amish Church. I still wonder how many actually stay though. There was a case with one girl in the movie who came back to join the Church, and later decided she really did not want to, ergo she was banned from her community. Not maliciously or anything, you just lose contact with alll of your family and everything. She actually ended up getting into a college without a high school education. So things seemed to turn out pretty good for her. The main guy in the film went back to join the Church, quitting his drug and drinking habits, got himself a nice girlfriend. However they broke up at one point and he went in a decline. Reverting back to his old self. His father kicked him out of the house and such, and he left as well. When he left he went to find his aforementioned ex who had previously left the Church (part of the reason they were forced to break up). Of the several cases of teenagers in the movie only one went back to join the Church and stayed there. One went back to live within the community, but never planned on joining the Church ... but yeah. It was interesting. I still stay I could get used to the lifestyle, minus the religious aspect. Even though I know the faith is a large part of the culture, I see it mainly there to set and enforce their standards, as it is with most any religion. If a person already behaves that way, whether or not he/she actually believes in Jesus should be secondary. I was surprised to see that the adults of the culture seemed to be more open-minded than I would really think them to be. Just as a random tangent, my friend Ken and I have this little tradition that whenever we drive in his car, we always listen to the album "Toxicity" by System of a Down. It was the only CD he ever really had in his car, so we always listened to it and it just kind of stuck. I just find it amusing. We can get really into the music sometimes, lol ... Like continuously bouncing violently in my seat during "Bounce." Good times, heh.

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