Fall(-ing) for the first time and Chronicles of Pakistan

Happy Halloween Blog Readers!

This morning I commemorated this holiday by running through the congressional cemetery. It houses one of the scariest things to many Americans, Congress. Once again, like always, so much has happened since my last post!

Two weeks ago, I went to Shenandoah National Park with three of my friends from my program, The Washington Center. We awoke at 6am to take the metro and then a bus to my friend Kateri’s aunt’s house to borrow her car. Then, we proceeded on our adventure to the Western side of North Virginia (in DC lingo: NOVA) I experienced my first time driving on the DC beltway, and my first time driving in nearly 2 months. The highway was beautiful, aka much prettier than I-10 and I-55, and my many trips driving back and forth from Texas. Sorry Louisiana and east Texas. Our first stop was the battlefield of Manassas/ Bull Run. It was beautiful and we pretended we were watching the battle. Next, we drove to the park, and stopped at the visitors’ center where the rangers gave us suggestions. We resisted the urge to stop at every single overlook, because there is probably about one per mile and they are all beautiful. My friends laughed at me as I gawked over every single beautiful tree and wanted to find the perfect ones to take pictures of (they are all from places that actually have fall). We ate lunch at a beautiful lodge overlooking the valley, and then continued our journey and hiked to some waterfalls. After we spent another hour, ooh and ahh-ing, we finished our drive of about 55 miles along Skyline Drive. We continued on to an apple orchard in the middle of nowhere Virginia and bought some apples and pumpkins. Then we finished our journey, returning to Maryland to bring the car back around 9. We got back to the RAF, which I like to call the rat, where we live around 10. It was an exhausting but lovely day.

Beautiful Picture of Shenendoah 

Shenendoah 

My favorite pumpkin!

Some of the delegates from Ford Scholars

Bull Run/Mananas Battlefield 

Giving a speech at MUN

This past week I competed in National Model United Nations-DC, with my classmates from Ford Global Scholars. My partner, Monique and I, represented the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on the International Conference on Population and Development after 2014. We spent the weekend giving speeches, listening to other countries; there were around 95, and forming alliances during informal caucuses to successfully write resolutions. We wrote a resolution that passed, which was mainly about human rights and using urban planning for successfully developing communities’ infrastructures. It was exhausting but very fun and we made lots of new friends from around the country. We also got distinguished delegation, which is the second highest award, and the highest The Washington Center had ever received. So with that, this quote about somes up my thoughts for the week. Next on the radar, NYC  and my half marathon.