Starting Anew

Wow - it's been a very long time since I last kept a blog. In retrospect, I probably should have started this at the beginning of summer, but better late than never. I don't think this blog will really have a "theme" per se, it will probably just consist of whatever I want to put on it. I initially considered making it a running blog, but I didn't want to get too obsessive. That doesn't necessarily mean I won't talk about it though.

This past summer has been far more productive than most. For most of June and the start of July, I took driver's ed at Parker with a bunch of mostly super snobby and obnoxious kids. My days would consist of running anywhere from 6-10 miles in the morning, maybe playing some Rock Band, reading some books, going to driver's ed, doing homework from the class, and not much else.

After I finished with that, I went to Hawaii for a soccer tournament in the beginning of July. It was pretty enjoyable, but for the fact that my soccer team was teeming with cliques. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that we did rather poorly in the tournament, but I enjoyed Hawaii itself. I did some running there, along with some mountain biking, swimming, snorkeling (with wild dolphins!), and surfing. The local cuisine was pretty good too.



About a week after getting back from Hawaii, I took a three-week AP Chemistry course at the Center for Talent Development (CTD) at Northwestern University in Evanston. It was rigorous, to say the least. Grueling, actually. But lots of fun - I made some awesome friends, and was more socially active than I think I've been this entire past school year. I managed to get up at 6 there to run every morning too, sometimes on less than 4 hours of sleep - I can't even imagine how I did it. I'm getting 8+ hours a night now, and still feel tired. Running definitely energizes me though, once I get out there. The food was pretty good there too. I pretty much stuffed my face there and ate more than I ever have in a while. I guess CTD represented many extremes for me...academically, socially, and nutritionally. There was this especially delectable frozen yogurt place that I frequented called Red Mango as well...good times. Mostly I miss the people there though.

The day after I came back from CTD I went to San Francisco. I had found out about a week into CTD that my grandfather was no longer eating or drinking and that my sister and mom had already gone to see him. He passed away the day before my dad and I left for San Francisco, which was unfortunate...but it was good to see the whole family altogether for the first time in a while once I got there. I hung out with some of my genius Chinese cousins too, which was a lot of fun. And had an abundance of Chinese food. Running was pretty hard there, since it was quite hilly, but the weather was ideal.

After San Francisco, I went to Ireland with my sister to see the other half of my family. We have a cottage there, and I pretty much consider that part of Ireland to be my second home. This time, since our parents didn't come, we stayed with our cousins at their house. They OWN a horse and a pony, which they keep at few hundred yards down their road, and are considering buying a third one. I spent my days there running (once again quite tough and hilly, but I consider myself lucky not to have been rained on even once - remember, this is Ireland, arguably the rainiest country in the world), horseback riding, mountain climbing, fishing, playing with my cousins, having tea, and the like. It was exactly the relaxing and pleasurable experience I've come to expect each summer. I don't consider my summers to be quite complete unless I've visited there.


Now school is about to start. I don't really know how to feel about that. I've spent the past few weeks mainly going to cross country practice and biking. After buying a new bike in June to go to soccer practices, I've started biking everywhere I can. It's not only really fun to zip through the city streets at nearly the same speed as cars, but I find that I can get to so many places as well. It's also supposed to complement running really well, which is a definite plus. Since I have found that we tend to run far less in cross country practice than I do on my own, I get really restless and find biking is a good way for me to get out all that pent up energy. At one point I was considering doing two-a-days with running, but decided not to overdo it. The last thing I want is to go overkill with running.

School starts next week, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. For some reason, last year I managed to all but entirely sacrifice my social life for academics. It worked; I did better in school than I ever have in the past, but it was merely through dint of excessive work. I'm not sure I want to go through that again, but I don't know if I can really find a balance. I was quite social at CTD, but my grades showed it as well.

Hopefully I will have more to write about here soon.