i am tired

this morning, talks began at 9:30, registration at 9 since today and tomorrow are a whole different conference than we've attended all week even though it's in the exact same place.

after the first two talks (the second one was by my BSM conjecture and proof prof.), jan and josef took me, sam, sarah, and melissa to see Karlstejn -- the palace of Czech King Charles IV, father of King Wenceslas, and basically the founder of just about everything in Prague, including Charles University, where I am right now. It was mighty impressed. Huge hill to climb to get there, but we got an hour long english tour too and learned a lot.

having returned to the city, sarah and melissa found a church with mass in english and went... i had been debating and decided i'd skip out since there are no talks tomorrow and i can attend international church of prague instead. sam commented he'd be interested in joining me and craig would probably come too. for a group of math students, this is a VERY non-standard religious demographic... out of 5 you should probably get 1 christian, 2 jews who don't actually attend synagogue, and 2 agnostic/athiests.... instead we have 4 of 5 are christian (2 catholic, 2 protestant), and arjun is...?

anyhow, while the girls were in mass sam started debating with me. he grew up elca but is leaning more baptist lately and takes an ULTRA literal interpretation of everything. "jesus was baptized in a river at age 30 so if we're supposed to model our lives on him, we should all be baptized by immersion as adults... i have a major problem with infant baptism and confirmation because i think that they're unBiblical" he tried to tell me "lutherans believe this" and "lutherans believe that" on several things that i said "um, no, not all of them" to and he tried to find stuff on the elca and lcms websites to support himself, but again it was in part due to his ultraliteral hardline on EVERYTHING. even though he fiercely questioned me on a lot of things, he was also willing to (equally adamantly) state that as long as you believe Jesus died for your sins you will be saved and that a lot of the other things we were debating will not decide whether we're saved or not, they're extra matters of tradition... where i argued that some things he gets upset about aren't "one's more Biblical than the other", he argued that in a lot of things that churches do, there's the "right, taking the Bible literally on how to practice" way and the "wrong, making our own constructions to replace the Bible" way. it was an odd debate, but really interesting to discuss religion for an hour with an REU student.

anyhow, dinner and making some calls, and then to sleep. it'll be refreshing to visit a church tomorrow since i was in airports most of last sunday.

later dudes