Taste

Well, stuff has been going on, but I can't say that most of it is interesting. I'm studying hard for the exam in May, and then getting my application packet together for this fellowship I'm going for. My friends are having personal and relationship issues, and I inadvertently got caught up in that over the weekend. Nikolai is still in Europe, and Alex is still a regular reader of my other blog. Not much is new.

I got a chance to talk with a couple of my friends over the past week. I usually consider ther to be a difference between being attracted to someone and liking someone. In my reflections, I realized that Nikolai is probably the first person in a long time that fits my physical, mental, and spiritual tastes. Usually it's one out of three, and I care most about two out of three.

Alex was not my type physically, but he grew on me, mainly because he was intriguing and intelligent. I met him through campus ministry, and I thought he was spiritually strong in Christ because he grew up in a Christian home. Mind you, at the time I made this judgment, I had just become a Christian, and so I didn't have a great deal of wisdom. Later on, he slipped away from Christ and became a functioning agnostic. My high school sweetheart was not my type physically, but he grew on me also, mainly because of his offbeat sense of humor. But as I started caring more about spiritual things, it put a strain on the relationship, since he was an RC ("recovering" Catholic) and much like Alex (though less philosophical), he was a functioning agnostic and spiritually bankrupt.

Nikolai is someone who I have liked for a long time, but I didn't allow myself to really "feel" it until a month and a half ago. Liked in a mental/personality sense, because he is smart, insightful, down-to-earth, and a genuinely caring and kind person. But I was also attracted to him physically. I have always, at least since my hockey-watching days back in high school (though maybe even before that), been attracted to Eastern European men. I think it's the contrast in coloration (light skin, dark hair/eyes), and the hairiness that is seen in many of them. And the accent. So there's that :-), but then Nikolai has other physical features, probably independent of his ethnicity to some extent, that are attractive. And then, to find as well, through his admission and evidenced through his actions, that he is a person of faith. And it's something he's serious about, but at the same time he hasn't checked his brain at the door. That's really cool...kinda different than how it is normally for me.