Posted on 03/11/2006 12:23:28 PM PST by dukeman
SARASOTA COUNTY -- It was spring break on Siesta Public Beach, and these college students were living it up.
Shirts were off. Bikinis and sunglasses were on. Lounging on their towels after a long game of Frisbee, a few of them reached into their cooler for some nice, cold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples and carrots.
"It's my last one," said Steve Christner, 21, a senior on spring break from Eastern Mennonite University. "So I'm really trying to soak it up."
Sarasota gets a small share of Florida's spring breakers, and many are Mennonite students looking for a good time in a not-so-typical way.
The attractions are the same as for other spring breakers: the sun, the beach, the parties. But these students are particularly drawn here because of ties to the Mennonite community.
Most stay with family. And their nighttime carousing usually consists of board games and backyard barbecues where their pastor is likely to be there to bless the food.
Even though they don't fill the hotels, they're the kind of spring breakers any area full of families and snowbirds would hope to attract.
Erin Duggan, public relations manager at the Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau, said they offer another advantage.
"They are ... very heavy in the use of bikes and public transportation, which is nice," she said.
While Duggan said the students enjoy the beaches and the park, EMU senior Ryan Reese, 21, said they also have connections here.
"It's a common place to spring break from EMU," Reese said while lying on the beach wearing his headphones.
For the past three years, Mennonites Dave and Laura Shirk have opened their home to EMU students over spring break. Laura Shirk's sister and brother-in-law, Dave Christner and his wife, JoEtta, housed 17 EMU students this year. Dave Christner is Steve's father.
The seven guys slept in the living room. Three girls shared a bedroom upstairs, and their daughter Jennifer, a freshman at EMU, and her six friends stayed in an apartment behind the house converted from a barn.
With that many students in one house, and similar groups in homes throughout the area, Sarasota can sometimes feel like an extended campus.
Steve Christner and his friends ran into other EMU students all week: at the beach, at restaurants and even at the Siesta Key Subway store.
"It's pretty interesting how often you run into people," said Seth Crissman, 19, an EMU freshman from Johnstown, Pa. "You don't really try, but it just happens."
Good clean fun
The ten college students in Christner's group spent most of their days on Siesta Key, playing volleyball, collecting sand dollars on Turtle Beach and otherwise entertaining themselves.
"I'm kind of content just playing in the sand," said Kyle Mast, 20, a junior at EMU, who brought "Automatic Millionaire" as a beach read. "That's about as much spring break action as I need."
As one beach day wound down, a few of the spring breakers got wild. They sat in a circle, buried their legs in the sand up to their knees and then held hands and tried to stand up.
"This is why it's great to be a Mennonite right here," Mast said, looking at his friends who were laughing and falling on top of each other. "We can have fun no matter what."
Later, they met up with about 40 EMU students at a pool party. They swam, ate and played pingpong. Losers didn't have to chug beer; there was none. Instead they got pegged in the back with a pingpong ball.
Separate sleeping quarters and a ban on alcohol might suck the fun out of spring break for some college students, but for these, the rules are self-applied.
"Alcohol wrecks lives," Steve Christner said. "None of my close friends got into that sort of thing, so it was never much of a temptation."
Aaron Nussbaum, 20, an EMU junior, added "the positives don't outweigh the negatives."
With so many of them in town, EMU students were also able to engage in the Mennonite pastime of "Meet someone and figure out how you're related," said Mast. There, he said, lies the downside of being a Mennonite: "You've got to be careful who you date."
It's a good thing, then, that the "ladies' man" was Daniel Hardjoleksono, 22, an EMU student from Indonesia and the only non-Mennonite staying with the Christners.
"He has no fear, that one," Nussbaum said, Hardjoleksono was chatting with a girl he met at a barbecue.
Getting here
Last week, Steve Christner and nine of his friends piled into two cars and drove 14 hours to the house they share. Exhausted, they unpacked their suitcases, chatted for a bit and went to sleep.
They woke up around 9:30 the following morning and went to church.
"I introduced them as my big family," said Dave Christner.
The students drove down for the same reason college kids love pizza: it's cheap. It's not because it is against their religious beliefs.
Most young Mennonites look and dress like typical college kids. No one at Siesta Public Beach would have pegged Jennifer Christner and her girlfriends as Mennonites as they sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane" while a stranger played the guitar.
"It's funny because some people hear Mennonite and think they're Amish," said Jessica Newman, 20, a sophomore at EMU from Grottoes, Va.
Eastern Mennonite University, in Harrisonburg, Va., is one of the largest Mennonite colleges in the United States. About 55 percent of the students are Mennonite.
Students are required to attend at least two-thirds of of the Monday, Wednesday and Friday chapel services offered in a month, and some classes begin with a prayer.
Dave Christner has sent all three of his children to EMU. His son Steve, who graduates next month, plans to be a youth pastor in a church.
"I felt called to it," he said.
During a barbecue Wednesday night, the adults sat back and admired the students' religious commitment.
They admit that they weren't always quite so wholesome. "You do some things you'd like to erase," Dave Christner said.
Even though the students avoided Siesta Key's nightlife, the week was as fun and crazy as it gets when dozens of Mennonite students get together. And they're perfectly content with that.
What the article doesn't mention is his new tattoo:
"BORN TO RAISE BARNS!"
Now that sounds like my kind of spring break. Although normally, I would just spend the whole week laying on the floor staring at the ceiling.
That sounds about like my level of excitement over spring break. A couple of times I went to visit my elderly grandmother in St. Petersburg. At least it was warm.
They are "nice kids"!
Many times the "old way" is more progressive than the new!
"They are "nice kids"!
Many times the "old way" is more progressive than the new!"
Not to mention a great deal more disease free, too.
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