Crossing Bridges and Appreciating Adversity

Besides running my first race in a while, lots of other things have been happening in my life (it’s DC, so of course they have J)

Two weekends ago, I traveled to NYC to visit my friend Emmi, watch the NYC marathon, and visit the UN with my program. I went to dinner with Emmi and her roommates and then woke up early to go to Queens, which was mile 13 of the marathon. I was able to hang out with my friend Mr. Dick Buerkle for the whole day and watch his son and wife run the marathon. In case you don’t know, I met Mr. Dick after finding out there was a former world record holder who had Alopecia and basically stalking him on the internet until I found his phone number and spent 3 weeks convincing my dad to call him (keep in mind I was in middle school), and he did call him and Mr. Dick decided to come. It’s safe to say our friendship has been mutually beneficial. The first time Mr. Dick ever really spoke publicly about Alopecia was to my high school track team and he continued to come back each year for the Tortoise and Hair. I called him often for running advice and he called me to see how my life was going. It was neat to meet a lot of his family members and they’ve all done some really cool things, like work for the UN and travel to lots of different countries. We chased around his son and wife all day and I remembered how inspiring big marathons are from the elites to the everyday people and the disabled.

With Mr. Dick in NYC

I was also able to go on a beautiful run with Emmi, one of my longest friends from running, who became an honorary member of the Episcopal team when she didn’t have a coach in high school. We attempted to remember where we met and we settled on running camp in middle school, although we couldn’t entirely remember. We shared many races at highland and many long runs at the lakes on Sunday morning back in the day.

Running with Emmi

I also toured the UN with my class, which was really neat. My favorite part was standing in the security council room with my friend from Russia and talking about how we would one day fix all of the problems between Russia and the U.S.

With my Russian friend Valeria in the Security Council Room at the UN

On Memorial Bridge with my dad

This past weekend, besides running, I took my dad on a grand tour around DC and the surrounding areas. We saw the beautiful harbor in Alexandria, University of Maryland, and went to see President Obama lay the wreath on the tomb of the unknown solider at Arlington. Unfortunately, we got on the last bus and the motorcade come through early so they didn’t allow us to go. Having waited in line for 1.5 hours we were disappointed, however it was a beautiful day so we trekked across memorial bridge to Lincoln, Washington, and the Capitol. I’ve crossed a lot of bridges lately: The bridge to NYC, bridges while in NYC, a beautiful bridge in Delaware, the Woodrow Wilson bridge, and my ultimate favorite- the unnamed bridge that the yellow line metro crosses from L’enfant plaza to Pentagon which gives an amazing view of DC.

This weekend I am excited to have very few plans for the first time in a while, only church and giving a capitol tour on my radar. I think this can be seen as a true measure of my happiness here. While I love my adventures, sometimes I definitely need some down time, whereas I would have never allowed myself this time in the past. Yes, there are plenty of uncertainties in my future, but there’s no reason I can’t do my best to face them head on and trust that everything will work out as it’s supposed to. As I was talking to Mr. Dick’s 12 year old niece who speaks 3 languages and has lived in 4 countries (but DC is her favorite place J), I was thinking what an exciting life she has at a young age and she said you have a cool life full of adventures. And I thought, well you’re right, many parts have been rocky, but I’m lucky and the adversity makes me life’s adventures that much more.