Dunny on Italgypt

Editor's note: Ladies and gentlemen of the Volcano, we are pleased to bring to you the first in what we hope is a series of Pearson-family guest blog appearances recapping our phenomenal two weeks together-- the first with the whole crew in Italy's spectacular Amalfi Coast , and the second with just the under-30's in Egypt. We predicted that Italgypt would be off-the-hook, and we were right. Even as we are loving life in Asmara, Eritrea, we are suffering from a severe case of Pearson withdrawal. And so without further ado, we bring you the stupendous John Dunagan Pearson, a.k.a., Dunny, Naganud, Young Dun, DP Dude . . .

Well, even on my 3rd day back from my 2 week adventure with the family, my mind still wanders back to Italy and Egypt every few minutes. I still habitually convert everything into Egyptian Pounds in my head (and then GASP at the price I'm about to pay at the Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru). I miss the Amalfi villa, the roofdeck dinners, the Egyptian night-trains, the camel/horse/donkey rides, and all the relics we encountered that are thousandsof years older than anything I'd ever seen in my life. And I still haven't slept past 5 am Pacific.

It's hard to express in a blog the effect a trip like this one can have on you. Especially to places that take you so far from your comfort zone, where the characters on billboards aren't from any alphabet song that I know, the lanes on the roads are more suggestion than law, and the price of goods is so openly negotiable. Being in places like this with your mom, dad, brother, and sister forces you either to come together or drift apart, and I can say with confidence and pride that we Pearsons came together, and I feel we left closer than we've ever been before. Trips like these accomplish things for families that cannot take place around a Thanksgiving dinner table in Houston, and I'm thankful that we got to bond in Italygypt in this unique time in our lives.

Meg and Rahul are perfect travel companions, for each other and those around them! Though giving me a hard time for my obsessive internet checking and my tendency to believe that every place I visit is (or has been) an island, their prowess at conquering the situations they encounter cannot be overstated. Similarly, it can easily be understated.

I've probably looked at my pictures from the trip 50 times in the last 3 days in hopes that my cubicle would take on the sense of adventure and intrigue of our 14 days of travel. I can't say that it's worked, but at least they remind me of what I learned from Italy and Egypt:

1. I love my family, every little quirky crease.
2. From Egypt especially, the monetary price of goods, the price of goodness, of wholeness-- and how low that price can be.
3. You have to walk away from a transaction before you can actually buy anything for a fair price. This does not apply to buying 1980s Astros paraphernalia.
4. If you build your town into a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, people will come. People will most definitely come.
5. If Americans ever lay on their car horns like Italians and Egyptians do, I really will have to move to Costa Rica. Or some other island. ;)

--Dunny