or more well known as Katie Sheng,my sister. We like to do this thing were we switch the first syllable of our names. Hers is way better then mine.
I am currently on a Greek island called Spetes. My family is finishing up our last vacation before I go on The World Race and Katie finishes her last year at university. We have been traveling around Italy, Croatia and we will end in one week in Athens. This is the last time I will see Katie for eleven months.
Katie will be graduating from New York University in Abu Dhabi next May. I won’t see her for eleven months because she is doing a summer internship in South Africa, she is beating me there
. We leave her in Athens where she will work on her capstone and then she will head to SA.
The reason why I am writing this blog about Katie is because I only have one week left with her and because she is one of the most influential people in my life. Let me start off by saying that I am very easily influenced by other people. Anyone that can prove to me they are expert in one topic, I will believe anything you say. Not always or ever a good thing, but its me 😉 Katie over the past three years has been completely transformed by university. The way she views work, government, religion, people, and culture has really changed. Each past summer vacation or winter break, I got to see her for about two weeks and everyday new topics are brought up. She challenges me to see beyond the surface and pushes me to examine what behind the scenes is really like.
Katie is my sister. I am thankful for her and her challenge to expand my horizons. However life is not easy with her. The biggest challenge in our relationship right now is how I like to sleep in the cold and she likes to sleep in the hot. This is overly fought about, but I have won on some occasions. In one airbnb, there were two bedrooms, one had a double bed and an air conditioner, the other had two smaller beds and no air conditioner. Obviously i should’ve gotten the bigger bed, but Katie ran into the bed and claimed it first. So, being the more mature sister, I took the air conditioner remote and made the room REALLY cold.
Having a sister has taught me patience and resilience, to fight when its right, to stand down when its time. Biologically, having a sister was never a choice, but to chose to have a sister is a hard. For me and Katie it means giving the time up to video chat while one of is away. It means confronting one another about the decisions we have made. It means considering one another when we make those decisions. But it also means staying up late watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, we’ve made it through three and a half seasons in two weeks. It means taking road trips to hike the Delaware Water Gap, which is not in Delaware. It means having a person by my side to support me in every decision.
Shatie Keng, I will miss you. But its a good thing we have modern day technology.
P.S. Katie has been trying to beat me in a game for THREE years, when I see her she better have beat me.
