Thank you for supporting me in the Race for Hope! To reward your loyalty, here is a link to something completely different
I think most of you are pretty much clued in to what I’ve been up to over the past week. There are only 500 photos of the running persuasion proliferated across Facebook, so I really don’t think that it is necessary to go into the details of my trip. Besides, I’m a bit jet-lagged still and feeling lazy. So I’m just going to post some pictures for posterity, and ease my way back into blogging and writing. I also must readjust to living in a place where as soon as I set foot outside the airport at 5:30AM, someone is thrusting a fistful of Orange phone cards at me.
Ça commence déjà? (You’re already selling me crap??) I asked the intrepid vendor reflexively. Then I remembered where I was and tried to be polite: “Non, ça va merci“.
I should do a better job at being polite. Probably didn’t help that I was at home among friends and able to sharpen my sarcasm skills this week. While at the Race for Hope start line, I wove my way into the crowd of 11,000 wearing a sign in support of BethAnn:
No offense to your friends, but I really do have the best friends in the world. How do I know this? Well, I’m a die-hard Masshole, as most of you well know, and I still keep referring to Washington DC as “home”. Don’t believe me? Look at the paragraph above the picture.
From the moment I got back, I was going non-stop. Everywhere I looked I had great friends surrounding me- from the moment I was spit out into IAD at six in the morning, they were there. Picking me up at the airport, lending me their husband’s cool car, taking me shopping, buying me lunch, driving me around (even if they don’t have a license and are blind in one eye), taking time off from work, going for a run when they should have been resting (T-Bone!), giving me suitcases and awesome jackets, driving my ass back to the airport, and overall just making me feel normal.
I say normal because there really is nothing normal about living in Africa- for a toubab, it’s more just a continuous string of awkward interactions, day after day….
So here are some of us at the Race for Hope.
Outside of our sweaty workout clothes, we are lawyers, CPAs, moms, scientists, engineers, interior designers, event coordinators, superwomen,among other things…
We also like to eat and drink wine together, whether we are in the same geographic spot or need to be teleconferenced in.
The Race finish line. You can insert one of the clever “Mastercard Priceless” adds in here..
…because I was so proud to be in D.C. and support my friend, as she continues to break barriers, and show people what living life is really about.
I was back staying in my old room. I had so much crap amassed by the time I had to pack for the airport again, it was like I never moved out of Blair’s. BethAnn may be able to raise over $50,000 for the NBTS without flinching, but I still consider it a small miracle when I can pack everything into my bags and still be under my luggage weight allowance.
(thanks in advance Blair, for mailing me the rest of my stuff)
Again at the airport terminal, ready to head back to Dakar. It was a mixture of “Good Lord what was that?” and “Man, I really needed that.”
Life is for the living, and telling the people you love how much they are appreciated.
Don’t waste your time in getting around to doing these things.