Take Me To the Volcano

Waiting for Gorilla, Act I

2009-03-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

A Ugandan hill. A tree. Morning.

Rahul, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before.

Enter Meg.

RAHUL:
(giving up again). Nothing to be done.

MEG:
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Rahul, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (She broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Rahul.) So there you are again.

RAHUL:
Am I?

MEG:
I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.

RAHUL:
Me too.

MEG:
Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (She reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.

RAHUL:
(irritably). Not now, not now.

MEG:
When I think of it . . . all these years . . . but for me . . . where would you be . . . (Decisively.) You'd be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

RAHUL:
And what of it?

MEG:
(gloomily). It's too much for one man. (Pause. Cheerfully.) On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.

RAHUL:
Ah stop blathering and help me off with this bloody thing.

MEG:
There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. (She takes off her hat again, peers inside it, feels about inside it, knocks on the crown, blows into it, puts it on again.) This is getting alarming. (Silence. Meg deep in thought, Rahul pulling at his toes.)

RAHUL:
Do you remember the story of the FAO Schwartz?

MEG:
Yes.

RAHUL:
Shall I tell it to you?

MEG:
No.

RAHUL:
It'll pass the time. (Pause.) I was a small child, I had just seen the Sigourney Weaver movie about Dian Fossey, fell in love with the silverback. One—

MEG:
Silver what?

RAHUL:
Silverback. Name was Digit. Two fingers fused together. King of his family. Only creature hairier than me. Was supposed to have been saved but was.. . (he searches for the contrary of saved) . . . damned.

MEG:
Saved from what?

RAHUL:
Poachers. Hell.

MEG:
I'm going.
(She does not move.)

RAHUL:
And yet . . . (pause) . . . how is it –this is not boring you I hope– I had seen the movie and then was taken to FAO Schwartz, as I had been every year, to choose one toy for Christmas. And when I arrive, in the stuffed animals department, there is Digit, life-size, plush.

MEG:
(with exaggerated enthusiasm). I find this really most extraordinarily interesting.

RAHUL:
I choose him. He costs $500. My parents say no. I am angry. Wailing. Thrashing. Sobbing. I will never take him home. I will be crushed. I was six years old.

MEG:
That movie with Sigourney Weaver. The one you watched. With Digit. That came out in 1988. You were thirteen.

RAHUL:
What?

MEG:
Thirteen. When this toy store meltdown happened. Six months away from high school.

RAHUL:
(Pauses). People are bloody, ignorant apes.

(He rises painfully, goes limping to extreme left, halts, gazes into distance off with his hand screening his eyes, turns, goes to extreme right, gazes into distance. Meg watches him, then goes and picks up the boot, peers into it.)

RAHUL:
Pah!

(He spits. Meg moves to center, halts with her back to audience.)

MEG:
Charming spot. (She turns, advances to front, halts facing audience.) Inspiring prospects. (She turns to Rahul.) Let's go.

RAHUL:
We can't.

MEG:
Why not?

RAHUL:
We're waiting for Gorilla.

--rahul

There’s Hope in Them Buckets

2009-02-26T03:29:00.000-08:00

On my solo tour of sub-Saharan Africa in 2001, I heard one message over and over again from the locals and expats I met in each country I passed through—an entire generation was about to be wiped out by AIDS. Many country’s leaders openly questioned whether HIV was real, the only medical education campaigns I saw were focused on an abstinence-only solution (that would have been hilarious in its incompetence and lack of understanding about local culture if the consequences hadn’t been so damn sad), and it was considered hopelessly naïve to think that the antiretrovirals that were quickly gaining momentum in America would ever be inexpensive enough to be dispensed in Africa.

Well, while a glance at Meg’s last post will show you that there are no shortages of problems in the local healthcare systems, and my four days in one corner of Kenya doesn’t qualify me to be an expert on the African AIDS problem, I’m here to tell you, in a town a couple hours away from our President's father’s birthplace, where people all around you claim that Obama is their cousin, uncle, or even “niece”, there is a little bit of hope here.

I spent Tuesday at a rural clinic with Meg, checking in on patients from the local villages. One man with six kids and two wives eagerly nodded YES! when Meg asked if he’d like to be prescribed more condoms along with his medications. Another woman who had walked three hours to get to the clinic beamed when Meg explained to her that her T-cell count had increased significantly due to the antiretrovirals she had started taking a few months earlier. When we walked home yesterday, we passed a police station where a police car with a huge megaphone attached to the roof began to roll by us and the six cops inside grinned at me, shouted through the megaphone “Hey John, how are you, are you feeling fine?” and then started singing together at ear-shattering volume at the top of their lungs to encourage the entire town to come to a free HIV education and training session.

Meg and her many UCSF and FACES colleagues are far better qualified to discuss why things may be starting to change here—activist pressure to allow generic medications to bring the price of ARVs down, financial and logistical support from governments and foundations, increased vigilance from local people as they watch the people they love die. And, god knows, there’s a lot left to be done. Mothers with HIV still often don’t bring their children in to be tested, afraid of knowing the results. Husband don't tell their wives that they're positive. Plenty of people tell doctors like Meg that they’ll use condoms but don’t. There still isn’t nearly enough funding or doctors or education or drugs to reach the people here that need them. 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV (2/3 of the world’s total cases), and while in many countries that number is starting to stabilize, one look at San Francisco will tell you that as ARVs start to save more lives, people will often start to become complacent about transmission, and rates will increase again.

But amidst the tragic stories, you’ve gotta find those signs of change when you can. A couple days ago, Meg and I were sitting in the back of a truck coming back from one of the clinics out by Lake Victoria. In Kenya, there’s been a major adult male circumcision campaign, in direct opposition to the growing anti-circumcision movement in America, due to studies that have shown that HIV transmission rates are lower among circumcised males. We stopped at another clinic, and some men got in carrying two large purple buckets. They were clearly being careful to put the lids on tight and keep the buckets on a flat surface. So, we asked them, “Jambo, what’s in the buckets?” They smiled, paused for a second and said, “foreskins”. We couldn’t tell for sure if they were joking, but for the next two hours, on the bumpy ride home, as the truck careened over rocks and tilted at a forty-five degree angle on the shoulder of the dirt road, I have to admit, I liked thinking “Here I am, 8 years after my journey alone through an AIDS-raved Africa, sitting in the back of a truck in Kenya, with my passionate save-the-world doctor wife who works at a local HIV clinic on one side, and two buckets of foreskins on the other.” Can we win the battle against AIDS? Yes we can.

--rahul

Ward rounds

2009-02-24T07:29:00.000-08:00

Today Reena and I made rounds in Migori District Hospital for the first time. We have been spending our time in the outpatient clinics up until now, as the hospital is staffed by clinicians from the Ministry of Health (MOH), not by the FACES* clinicians with whom we work. We joined one of the FACES doctors and the MOH clinical officer to round on the 10 or so patients on the male ward (nothing against the women: morning rounds on the female ward had already occurred; we plan to join rounds on that side on Wednesday).

Rounds were a sobering and intense experience-- the severity and complexity of the medical problems we encountered in most cases far exceeded the resources and subspecialty expertise available in this rural setting. One young boy with HIV/AIDS had suffered seizures and near-coma as a result of an unidentified infection in his brain. He was being treated empirically for cerebral malaria, cryptococcal meningitis and bacterial meningitis with little response, and he remains without meaningful communication or purposeful movement as his mother watches over him and hopes for a recovery that is unlikely to come.

We examined two young men who had both developed severe leg wounds after relatively minor injuries that should have healed under normal circumstances. Both men were found to have advanced AIDS, which was the cause behind their impaired wound healing. Without advanced wound care such as surgical debridement, an appliance called a “wound vac,” and skin grafting, it seemed their chances of keeping their legs and even their lives were not great.

Some cases provided a bit more room for hope. One young man had severe right upper quadrant abdominal pain concerning for cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder) and needed an ultrasound and possibly surgical intervention. Ultrasound is available in the private hospital in Migori, but the patient would have to pay for it. Fortunately his family could afford the expense, and we are hopeful that the source of his pain will be known and potentially treated when we return to the hospital on Wednesday.

Reena and I struggled with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, familiar to us from past experiences working in resource-poor settings, where the divide between what our patients need and what is available is so vast. We also found gratification in our ability to be of meaningful service to the patients and the other providers this time around. As third year residents, we were actually the most trained clinicians present in the hospital, and thus we helped to guide the clinical decision-making as we made our way around the ward. After eleven years of higher education, it is a relief to know that we have actually learned a thing or two along the way.

Tomorrow we go on a field visit to one of the smaller satellite clinics, which will make Migori District Hospital look resource-rich by comparison.

* FACES stands for Family AIDS Care and Education Services, and is the organization that we are working with through UCSF

- Meg

Husband. Hair. Haiku.

2009-02-24T07:28:00.000-08:00

Husband is here. Yay.
But with a surprise beard. Boo.
Soon to be shorn. Yay.

- Meg

Blurbs from the first fortnight

2009-02-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

Highlights from the first two weeks in Kenya . . .
- Eating sweet, juicy mangoes for 30 cents a pop! Ate a whole one tonight for dessert, plan to do the same every day for the rest of my stay in Migori. YUM!!!

- The warm-hearted, big-smiling people of Kisumu and Migori. Such friendly, welcoming communities—a far far cry from the menacing, hectic feel we got in Nairobe last time around. I could stay here a while.

- The kids yelling at the top of their lungs “How aaaare youuuuuu???” and collapsing with shy laughter when we reply.

- Traveling abroad with Obama as my president and not Bush !!! I didn’t realize ahead of time how different it would feel to be PROUD to be an American and to WANT to talk politics rather than feeling ashamed. Countless Kenyans, from Tuk-tuk drivers to doctors, have told me that Obama has given them an optimism they never before dared to have, that they themselves and their children and Kenya as a whole might become something great one day.

- A last-minute trip to Masai Mara, in which despite our lack of advanced planning, organized tour or 4-wheel drive vehicle, we ended up with a fun-loving and able driver whose company we loved, a hawk-eyed Masai park guide who, from the back middle seat of our beat-up Toyota station wagon somehow spotted a family of cheetahs lying under a tree hundreds of yards away. A cheetah with her four baby cubs up close and personal! That and a pride of lions we admired from within 10 feet (and not a single other vehicle around), a crocodile sunning himself next to a big heap of hippos, a herd of elephants that crossed the road right in front of us (with babies!) and much more. All for $40 per person.

- Learning from the clinical officers here who struggle daily to take care of HIV patients with very limited resources, and sharing with them the knowledge we have gained from our own training in the US. More on clinic experiences to come.

Lowlights from the first two weeks in Kenya . . .
- Mosquitos that come with the risk of malaria. I have discovered that I am somewhat paranoid when it comes to this particular disease (don’t worry Mom, I haven’t missed a single prophylaxis pill, I sleep under a mosquito net, and I am rabid when it comes to killing them).

- The fashion and hygiene nightmare that were Reena and Meg after wearing the same jeans that we sweated in for 11 straight days while we waited for British Airways to finally deliver our lost bags. The two of us would have been no match for the stylish Kenyans anyway (the women of Kisumu look like a million bucks every day, in heels, slim skirts and brightly colored fabrics), but we were really slummin’ it in our tan hospital Clarks (Meg) and our hiking boots (Reena) in clinic. Desperate for clean clothing more suited for the 90 degree heat, we hit up a big open market in Kisumu and found some choice items that had made their way to Kenya from Goodwill (H&M reaches the developing world!). Fashion show photos to come when Rahul brings me the camera cable which I went off and left.

- Missing my hubby! Being back in the developing world without my backpacking partner in crime feels just plain wrong. But he’s headed my way in 5 days. Wooooooo!!!

- Day after day seeing patients go without life-saving diagnostic and therapeutic measures that we take for granted back home. Today I saw a patient with headache and neurologic abnormalities concerning for a mass in her brain. Without a head CT to characterize the mass, she will have to be treated empirically for an infection called toxoplasmosis and hope she improves. If she instead has a brain tumor, there is little chance that she will ever be able to get a CT to make the diagnosis, and even less chance that she would be able to receive the specialized treatment it would need.

- Meg

The Volcano Liveth!

2009-02-15T00:56:00.000-08:00

After three years lying dormant, without so much as a hiss of steam, the volcano rumbles anew! We are on the move again--me already, and Rahul soon to join me! The scale will be much smaller this go-round—a month in Kenya and Uganda as compared to the whole of 2005 spent circumnavigating the globe—but we’ll take what we can get.

The past three years have been short on adventures overseas and long on adventures on-call (and not of the salacious Grey’s Anatomy variety, unfortunately), and we scarcely recognize the globetrotters that we once were. We blame the neglect we have shown our poor passports on Meg’s residency, as we do all other shortcomings of ours.

The residency years did witness one grand adventure in the life of Meghul . . . our Massive Ass Karaoke Wedding!!! Getting married completely rocked our worlds, leaving all of life’s previous highs in the dust, and shattering any notion we might have had as to how much fun one could possibly have at one time. Our honeymoon in Laos and Vietnam was definitely volcano-worthy, but spending it in internet cafes and not in our luxury hotel rooms was, we agreed, a terrible idea all around.

So, without further ado, we bring to you the resurrection—if brief—of the volcano. Hopefully it will never again lie dormant for years on end, for we will not have residency to blame for all of life’s woes much longer.

Stay tuned for stories of my medical work in HIV clinics in rural Kenya. Internet access here has proved challenging to say the least, and I spent most of my first week here trying—and mostly failing—to get British Airways to deliver my lost luggage. Now that I am finally settled in Migori and no longer wearing the same vile jeans, I'll try to start posting snippets whenever I can get online from clinic!

Off now to do some shopping close to the Tanzanian border!

-Meg

The Other Side

2006-04-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

The snow has finally left Troy, and yesterday, so did I. I gotta say, I was pretty choked up as I drove the twisting gravel road out of the canyon. Because after making it through the long, cold winter, now that the sun is out and spring has come, as I look around the pastures full of cows and calves and the people I love who take care of them, let me tell you: there's nowhere where the grass is greener right now than Troy.

--rahul

Earth Day...Saturday

2006-04-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

Much as I would love to take credit for this photo, it was actually taken by someone named Metrix Feet. But, if you go to Yahoo! For Good's brand spankin'-new Earth Day page (http://earth.yahoo.com), and click on the photos link, you'll see 78 other amazing photos like this one. And if you look closely, you'll see a little piece of Take Me to The Volcano as well.

Saturday, in addition to being Day 1 of the MS 150, and Meg's 29th Birthday, is Earth Day. Ah, I love being a tree-hugger with a girlfriend who was born on Earth Day.

Though we've mostly shied away from politics here, that's probably going to start to change a bit now that we're leaving the road and heading back to California. So if you get a chance in the next couple days, take a look at the Earth Day site, and especially its "10 things you can do to decrease climate change". And, at the very least, let's celebrate the fact that Yahoo! was actually willing to put its corporate ass on the line and say that yes, indeed, climate change does exist, and yes, in fact, we should do something to decrease it.

Mad props to my awesome friend Erin for putting her MBA to good use with her work on this site...

--rahul

A Little Bit of Jersey in Troy

2006-04-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

Can you believe that Meg tried to convince me not to buy this denim jacket? Shocking. I bet she's totally on-board now with yet another one of my excellent fashion decisions. Especially because I can finally say that I have an answer to the question: "But what pants will you be able to wear with that?"

--rahul

Anatone

2006-04-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

Anatone is the "bigger" town up the road from Troy. I took this picture yesterday (April 16th), after a massive snowstorm had come through and blanketed the tri-state area. Season of Spring, we scoff at you!

There ain't a lot of people around here.

--rahul

Tandem in Training

2006-04-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

We are officially nine days away from the MS 150, the annual Multiple Sclerosis fundraising bike ride that Meg's family (and nowadays, very extended family) does every year. 180 miles over two days from Houston to Austin. Woohooo!

As you may know, we're riding a tandem this year, putting the health of our relationship on the line to provide amusement to 11,000 other riders as we fall over repeatedly and bicker about who gets to "be the captain." To prepare for 48 hours with a partner who will become petulant whenever not seated in front, I've been training with a 15 month-old named Roan (see photo).

And, let me tell you, there's nothing better than wearing spandex in Oregon cowboy country right after Brokeback Mountain opened in the local (90 minutes away) theater.

We're about halfway to our $2,000 combined fundraising goal, so just in case you've got some money burning a hole in your pocket, we'd love your support. Here are the links to donate:

Meg: http://ms150.org/edon.cfm?id=185298

Rahul: http://ms150.org/edon.cfm?id=185299

And, I highly recommend that you check out Meg's brother Dunagan (and friends)'s latest excellent fundraising short film, entitled "Brokebike Mountain." They've really outdone themselves this time, weaving a complex tale of two men bravely daring against all odds to become tandem riders in a society that closed-mindedly believes only in "one man, one bike". It's really freakin' brilliant! Here's the link:

http://www.executiveranch.net/ms150/2006/brokebike.html

--rahul

Oh Sweet Jesus

2006-04-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Whenever I go home to Sacramento to see my momma, she's always had a Mrs. Smith's Dutch Crumb Apple Pie waiting in the oven for me.

My love for Cinnabons, those culinary masterpieces that once added such pleasure to my days in Jersey and now have spread all the way to Bahrain, is well documented.

But now, oh lord, Mr. Cinnabon and Mrs. Smith have joined forces to create the dessert that will destroy what little ability I had developed to resist junk food. I am in awe.

http://www.mrssmiths.com/Bakery/proDescript.php?id=23&ct=2

--rahul

A Study in Legwear

2006-04-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

On the left we have Dave, cowboy extraordinaire, modeling a very elegant pair of leather chinks (like chaps, except they show just a bit of leg, depending on how much fringe you desire). On the right we have a calf, let's call him 6224, showing off a fabulous new splint that we put on him after he got stepped on by his momma. Who says rural America doesn't know fashion?

--rahul

Cows in the Clouds

2006-04-04T14:52:00.000-07:00

It's the moments like this that make me understand how Hindus everywhere can see cows as spiritual creatures.

--rahul

The scene from Match Day

2006-04-03T15:08:00.000-07:00

Since we have moments every couple days where we look at each other, jump up and down, and say "We're going back to California!", we figured we'd share the photo we took two weeks ago on Match Day, right after we opened up the envelope that told us that we'd be moving to San Francisco. Meg celebrated by looking gorgeous, as usual. I celebrated by opening my eyes, kinda.

--rahul

Life's a little different in Troy

2006-04-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

With three weeks left on the ranch, I'm starting to take stock of all the things that shocked me when I first got out here, and that I've grown so accustomed to in the last two months. Here's a few:

The closest weekend brunch place (a 90 minute drive away), famous for its cornbread pancakes, closes at noon on Sundays, because by then, everyone in the County has eaten breakfast and lunch
A standard add-on to any health insurance policy here is a $50/year fee to be "Lifeflighted" out, since the nearest hospital is 1-4 hours away, depending on where you live
After Cory's tuxedo-clad date for the senior prom picked her up at her house, he drove a mile and then pulled his pickup over. Thinking that he was hoping to have a little pre-dance makeout session, Cory closed her eyes, then opened them, and watched in horror as he rolled down his window, pulled a rifle out of the backseat and shot a skunk dead on the side of the road. Then they went to the dance.
There are no stoplights in the entire county
A sign like the one in the photo above can be translated as "may see another car in the next 50 miles"

--rahul

The lovers, the dreamers, and me

2006-03-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

Back on the ranch after a whirlwind two-week trip up and down the East Coast with Meg. We got to rub elbows with Laura Bush, rap with Robert Siegel and Michele Norris during a break at All Things Considered, hit the beach in Florida, search for cherry blossoms in DC, drink carbombs in Greensboro, and spend all kinds of time with our families and friends. We felt the love from our right coast crew. Thanks everyone for taking us in! We promise to find a phat pad in San Francisco to lure you over so we can start repaying all the generosity.

And yesterday, after tagging and innoculating some calves in a crazy rainstorm, this is what I saw on my way back to the barn. I couldn't find any gold inside, but there were three calves getting their strength back after being born weak to first-time mothers. I think they're gonna make it.

--rahul

California, Here We Come!

2006-03-17T05:57:00.000-08:00

We're coming to San Francisco! Yesterday, we found that out that Meg matched at her 1st choice--UCSF's Primary Care-Underserved Population Program at SF General. So basically, she just signed up to spend 80 hours/week for the next three years with the homeless and heroin addicts. Woohooo! We couldn't be happier!

Residency starts mid-June, so by late April we'll be heading out to Cali to start setting up life there. Start preparing yourself for the springtime drunken karaoke celebration.

--rahul

A Brief Return to Civilization

2006-03-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I hop on a plane to Connecticut (via Idaho, Utah, and Minnesota) to reunite with Meg in time for Match Day. On Thursday at noon, we'll find out where we're gonna live and work for the next 3 years. We plan to spend the next week celebrating with our family and friends up and down the East Coast, enjoying life as much as we can possibly can before Meg starts her 80-hour workweeks in June.

Ranch life is treating me real well, though I gotta say, having responsibilities is tiring. Today we found a two-day-old male calf that had been left or lost by its mother and was shivering at sunrise, unable to stand, body temperature 10 degrees below where it should have been. We got it into a shed, built a fire for it, nursed it from a bottle, and massaged it till we got its temperature back to normal. Tomorrow he'll be joined with a mom whose stillborn calf we had to pull out of her womb with chains and a hand-winch. If we're lucky, she'll take on her foster kid and make him her own. And, just maybe, by the time I get back to the ranch, they'll be following each other around the pasture, chewing on alfalfa and mooing when one of them strays a bit too far away. God I love this job.

--rahul

Well, I Guess That Makes Me Brad Pitt

2006-03-08T09:43:00.000-08:00

From the "North End News" gossip column in this week's Wallowa County Chieftain:

A new face around the community is Rahul, a friend of David and Cory Flynn. Rahul is fresh back from a round-the-world excursion with girlfriend, Meg. He will be spending the next few months helping David with the ranch and possibly taking a hand with little Roan. A real friendly sort of fellow and girls, he's quite a nice looking young man, but before you all perk up out there did I mention his girlfriend, Meg, is a young Jennifer Aniston look-alike? Welcome to our community Rahul and hope you find it to your liking.

--rahul

Things I Have Learned on the Ranch, Part I

2006-02-22T18:03:00.000-08:00

When you decide to celebrate the freedom of the great outdoors by peeing on the nearest cattle fence, make sure that it's not an electric cattle fence.

My Night With Tone Loc

2006-02-18T15:15:00.000-08:00

By many measures, the town of Troy, Oregon, is quite remote. There is no cell phone reception, any call that you make on a landline automatically counts as long-distance, and the nearest grocery store is an hour-and-a-half drive away through three states. But when I moved here to work on a cattle ranch run by my friends Cory and Dave, I think the major concern I heard from my buddies in San Francisco was something along the lines of "What are you gonna do there for fun?" We all wondered what it would be like to not have any movie theaters, dance clubs, or bars to fill up an evening.

So that's why I was shocked, intrigued, bemused, and most of all, pumped, when Dave came up to me last week and said, "Get ready, Tone Loc is coming to town." "Town", in this case, meant Lewiston, Idaho, 90 minutes over the mountains from us. But since all I knew of Idaho was its fame for potatoes and white supremacists, Lewiston seemed like the perfectly ironic enough place for some old skool rap revival.

Tone Loc, for those of you who don't know who he is (and, if you don't know, you weren't a teenager in 1989), was the purveyor of exactly two classic hip-hop hits--"Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina", the latter a prescient satire of every chest-thumping gangsta tale of sexual conquest that came to populate 90s rap. "Funky Cold Medina" is an "afrodisiac" drink that Mr. Loc hopes will help him "git with the ladies", but instead leads to: 1) his dog humping his leg, 2) a contestant from the Love Connection wanting to marry him after the first date, and 3) him taking a lady named Sheena back to his "crib" only to get a little "surprise". Let us take this opportunity to all get a little Loc'ed out:

I went up to this girl, she said "Hi, my name is Sheena"
I thought she'd be good to go with a little funky cold medina
she said "I'd like a drink", I said "ok, I'll go get it"
and then a couple of sips, she cold licked her lips and I knew that she was with it
so I took her to my crib and everything went well as planned
but when she got undressed it was a big old mess
Sheena was a man
so I threw him out
I don't fool around with no Oscar Meyer weiner
you must be sure that the girl is pure for the funky cold medina

Notice how the last two lines subtly evoke those halcyon days of the late 1980s. Not only does Loc reference the cultural and culinary touchstone of the "Oscar Meyer weiner", but then he takes us back to our shared memories of those "pure" innocent days when we were 13, just coming into our hormones, and all we wished for in a girl was that she not have a penis. Sigh.

Despite the man's obvious genius, I have to admit that I was a little concerned that Tone Loc was coming to Lewiston. Had he really fallen so far that he had to leave the "Left Coast" to come up to Idaho in the middle of the winter to play a 250-person capacity bar named Boomer's? Was he still reeling from his stunning loss during the 1989 Grammy Awards in the Best New Artist category to Milli Vanilli? (Before you mock, Rob and Fab beat the Indigo Girls that year too). Was this all a baldfaced ploy by an ageing rapper for a little more "loot"? Or maybe, just maybe, was this visit an affirmation that our new millenium has finally brought us a colorblind society where white people everywhere can nod their heads, throw their hands in the air, form a W with their fingers and scream "This is def! Also, it is fly!" with a complete lack of self-consciousness?

Friends, I am here to report that my Friday night with Loc took me to a fully irony-free zone, where the whitest people I've ever seen in my life mixed freely with the natives from the local Nez-Perce reservation and wondered aloud to themselves which of the four black guys mingling through the bar was Tone Loc. Where dudes with ZZ top beards guilelessly celebrated whenever Loc and his two forty year-old backup MCs substituted "Lewiston" for "Compton" in their songs. Where hoochy-dressed middle-aged women desperately leaned open-mouthed toward the front as Tone poured from a bottle of the "Funky Cold Medina." And where Dave, cowboy through and through, the man who I married last year, took his shot, jumped on the stage, took the mic from Tone Loc, and freestyled until getting booed off the stage.

The night gave me hope. Hope that a boy from Jersey can join with cowboys and indians in Idaho and, for a forty-minute set, sing, sing, sing, tongue-nowhere- near-cheek, in brotherhood with one of the godfathers of rap. Hope that here on the ranch I can lose all of the cynicism of the city and party whenever I want like it's 1989. And hope that the next two months out here will somehow measure up to the Friday night I spent in Lewiston with Mr. Tone Loc.

Never Lose the Outrage, or the Chocolate, or the Microlending

2006-02-15T07:14:00.000-08:00

Happy post-Valentine's day! Here's three links:

You have $1. One dude's thoughts on how you should spend it to do the most good:
http://www.slate.com/id/2135721/

If you thought you were a slave to chocolate, try living on the Ivory Coast: (from Kimmy)
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/02/06/PM200602067.html

And then channel your outrage by buying fair trade chocolate: (from Natalie)
http://store.gxonlinestore.org/chocolate.html

A Day in the Office

2006-02-14T08:24:00.000-08:00

Calving season has begun up here on the ranch in Oregon, and that's not a good thing. The cows up here weren't supposed to be birthing for two more weeks, but one of the herds apparently got into some pine needles. Eating pine needles can lead to spontaneous abortions, so we're finding a lot of very premature calves out on the range. Some are stillborn, and some are okay, but most of them are somewhere in the middle. This leads to moments where you're hurrying to the shed with a baby calf in your arms, hoping you can get it close to a fire and feed it with a bottle so it might get its temperature and strength up and make it through the night. Your jacket's covered in calf shit (which, in case you haven't had this experience, is a whole world of nastiness beyond cow shit) and you're sitting on the floor rubbing the cattle's belly and praying that it'll stand up and be able to go outside again, and knowing that, well, it probably won't.

Que Le Vaya Bien, Quixote

2006-02-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

So . . . we're back! We've actually been back for over 6 weeks now but since we've been couch-surfing ever since, it still feels like we're traveling. Only with much better food and higher standards of hygiene. We've been visiting long-lost friends and family all over the country under the guise of Meg's interviews for residency. To her momma's relief, she agreed to get a real haircut for the occasion, and traded in her tired backpacker garb for an interview suit and her backpack for a smart little attaché (whatever that is).

Meg's soon to head back to New Haven to finish up that whole med-student gig she's got going on, but not without checking out Rahul's new life as a cowboy first. Because he can't look for a job until Match Day comes and we find out what city we'll be calling home for the next 3 years, he's decided to shack up at his friends' cattle ranch in eastern Oregon and make himself useful. Goals include: looking less stupid riding a horse, pulling a calf from its momma's wahoo, changing a poopy diaper (an adorable one year-old named Roan is in the house), and of course continuing his quest to write the Great American Short Story (downgraded from previous Great American Novel ambitions).

While we won't have anything in the way of a permanent address to show for ourselves until June, we are in possession of new cellphones (with multi-colored flashy blinky lights that please us greatly). Call soon and often!

Rahul: 415-623-4559 (415-MAD-ILLZ)

Meg: 415-623-4562 (415-NAD-GLOB)

Before we get all philosophical and long-winded on you, we wanted to say:

1) The blog shall live on (http://tothevolcano.blogspot.com). Starting next week, Rahul's gonna start telling stories of his new life as an Oregon cowboy. There'll be blood, there'll be tears, and it'll be waaaay more graphic than Brokeback Mountain.

2) For everyone who didn't have the patience or the bandwith to view all 2000+ photos that we uploaded, we've narrowed 'em down to a mere 171! If you're interested, head to our Best of the Volcano photo album: http://flickr.com/photos/rahuljyoung/sets/72057594049841786/

-----------------------------
We keep promising to come up with deep and profound reflections from our year on the road in this, our last Quixote email (until the next journey, that is), so here's a start. The questions we've been asked the most since coming home have been "Do you feel like a different person from when you left?" and "Is it hard/weird/distressing to be back in America after everything you've seen?" And the honest answer, dissatisfying though it may be for the asker and us too, is "well, not really." We certainly hope that spending a year in the developing world has changed us. We almost wish we were suffering from extreme "reentry" shock and angst, but the truth is that being home still feels like, well, being home. It feels pretty natural to be back, to spend on a mocha what we spent on a night's accommodation a few months ago, to call family and friends whenever and wherever we feel like it on our disco cellphones, to spend hours on Christmas Eve driving all over Houston looking for the perfect last-minute addition to the Zapatista dolls we bought in Chiapas that no longer seem like quite enough. And it feels damn good to pile Meg's whole family + Rahul onto her parents' bed for the annual "Twaz the Night Before Chriztmaz" reading/debaucle (don't ask), or to know that when Rahul's mom needs the lawn mowed and the gutter unclogged, we're the ones to do it.

There are times when we are aware of differences in ourselves, and they creep in at unexpected moments. When Meg realized that her airport shuttle driver was Eritrean, instead of having no clue where Eritrea was, she excitedly jabbered about her favorite places to get shiro and cappuccinos in Asmara and got to hear about the driver's experience as a fighter in the struggle for independence from Ethiopia. When we spent New Year's in the Mission district in San Francisco this year, it felt more like home to us than it had a year ago when we lived there, as we caught Spanish phrases floating by and stopped longer to gaze at the boldly colorful street buildings. We felt ourselves focusing less on our own vulnerability and whiteness, and more on the vulnerability and vitality of the people all around us. When we wandered the aisles of a Costco in Idaho celebrating the low low prices on vats of hummus (without bargaining!), we wondered what our favorite Himalayan vegetable vendor would think of the massive shelves of shrink-wrapped bulk food.

For both of us, the stark contrast between life here in the developed world and life there in the developing world, the brutality of extreme poverty, the outrage and helplessness it engenders in us, and the need to do *something* about it have never been so palpable. For those of you who've been following the blog all year, you haven't heard a lot from us about outrage or injustice. We tried to keep our blogposts light-hearted and (hopefully) entertaining, and also reassuring to our mothers that we'd return home unscathed.

And it wasn't just the way we wrote, it was the way we lived. We had an absolute blast last year, and yet, for most of the trip, we were surrounded by poverty and hardship. We could have spent the entire year despairing at the fucked up state the world is in, and maybe we should have more than we did. We could also have distanced ourselves from the suffering, blocked it all out, and left it behind when we returned to America. What we tried to do instead was recognize the sometimes harsh realities, but continue to seek out beauty and humor whenever we could. Now we're back, and we're starting to ask ourselves: how do we adapt without forgetting, immerse ourselves in our lives here without losing track of the things we want to change, enjoy every moment in America without ignoring the responsibility we both feel to start doing something damnit!?

We don't know. We don't know. Is there room in Meg's upcoming 80-hour workweek to work toward social justice? Is taking a job in green building enough to make Rahul feel that he's doing his part? What happens when we have kids? It's so damn hard to change the world even if you're willing to sacrifice the rest of your life in the process. Can we even start to try and still indulge in gourmet dark chocolate and cheap red wine, romantic getaways to New York City and impassioned karaoke ragers, and love everyminute of it? We don't know, but we're trying to figure it out. Let us know if you've pulled it off, because we could sure use some role models right now. For now all we got is that we have to keep searching for an answer, and try never to lose the outrage, or the chocolate.

I Heart Troy Polomalu

2006-02-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

Last year around this time, we woke up early in Bangalore, India hoping to cheer on my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers to victory in the AFC Championship Game, only to have our hopes dashed at 6am by the dastardly Patriots. This year we’ll be watching the Steelers win the Super Bowl from Wallowa, Oregon, drinking beers in the afternoon surrounded by Seahawks fans (cuz Seattle, being only 5 hours away, is just about the closest major city to us out here). Different year, different place, different time, different life, but somehow Meg and I are gonna be on a couch together again, cheering on the Steelers. I hope this part of life never changes.

--rahul

Back in Time

2006-02-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

We leave for Oregon today, thus postponing our plans to wrap up our travel photos and thoughts of closure once again. But we're gettin' there. Really, we are!

And so we begin our life as cowboy and cowgirl out on a cattle ranch run by friends of ours. We'll be birthing cattle, riding horses, mending fences, nannying a one year-old named Roan, and working on our thesis (well, Meg will anyway). The closest airport to Troy, Oregon is Lewiston, Idaho, so we're flying there via Boise. And check this out: our flight from Boise to Lewiston leaves at 6:45pm, and lands at.....6:40pm. Whoa.

--rahul

Bend Over Blogfriend

2006-01-25T16:08:00.000-08:00

Gasp. It's been over a month since we've visited the Volcano. We've been neglecting you, and we're really, truly sorry. But hey, doesn't this photo make it all worthwhile?

If not, how about checking out the rest of our Honduras Photo Album so you can see us in stirrups or on zip lines? And that's just the beginning! Tomorrow and Friday, we'll hit you with two more photo albums taking us all the way through the Bay Islands, Guatemala, Mexico, and back to Texas. And next week, we'll come out with our long-awaited, oft-promised "Best Photos of The Trip" album.

Somewhere in there, we'll tell you all about Meg's journeys on the interview trail, Rahul's brief brush with employment, and our plans to cowboy up and watch the Steelers win the Super Bowl while we get drunk with a bunch of hippies in Oregon. Take Me to The Volcano is back, friends. Thanks for sticking around. We promise we won't leave you alone again.

Mama, I´m Coming Home!!

2005-12-21T08:09:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Real de Catorce, magical old mining town in the Sierra Madre, and all that stands between us and Houston, TX is 18 hours on three buses. Am I ready to leave Mexico, the road, guacamole, tequila? You´d better believe it. I miss my momma, my pops, my sister, my friends, bagels with cream cheese, driving my Ford Probe through the hills of California, and wearing anything other than the four shirts I´ve had with me this year.

My quest for perspective on the upcoming momentous return was waylaid yet again, this time by an impromptu hike to a ghost town up the hill, a bottle of wine and a sunset, and a riddle about a mummy that consumed me for an afternoon (There are 13 mummies--12 are filled with rocks and all weight the same amount, and one has a fabulously precious ruby that is either lighter or heavier than the rocks. You have a scale and you´re allowed three weighings of the mummies before you must choose which mummy has the ruby. If you choose wrong, you release the mummy spirits and they eat your brain. How do you find the ruby?)

Nevertheless, I´m starting to get ahold of some of it all. Behold, our very own Harper´s Index:

Number of countries we visited: 20
Number of flights we took: 35
Accumulated hours of time on buses: 28 days
Number of different beds we´ve slept on: over 100
Number of friends and family who came to visit us on the road (not counting massive-ass karaoke rager): 17
Fraction of the year that we spent with these friends and family: 1/3
Total cost of the trip: $15,000/person (5K for flights, $20/day for living, and $2800 for the occasional fancy splurge)
Number of sisters who got engaged while we were gone: 1--As of yesterday, my little sister Leela´s gonna make an honest man out of her boyfriend Sam. WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!

The people who come to visit keep telling me that I haven´t changed a bit, which is a little disconcerting. I´m just not okay with finally fulfilling this lifelong dream and being exactly the same person I was when I left. So I´m hoping over the next few weeks, as Meg and I reunite in Houston, head to California, tour medical programs on the West Coast, and then split off so she can finish med school and I can become a cowboy, that just maybe I´ll discover some profound knowledge that I gained this year that I never could have possibly figured out in America. As soon as I come up with it, I´ll let you know. For now, I´m content with knowing I saw an uncountable number of beautiful things this year, and I saw it all with the woman I love. It don´t get no better than that.

--rahul

4 days left...

2005-12-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

And on my last Saturday night on the road, I drank cheap tequila and boarded a small train that drove us half-a-mile into a silver cave that was first mined in the 1500s and now makes its living as a high-class Mexican disco. Brian and Colin and I danced till 4, took the train back out of the mine, and walked home, trying and failing to comprehend that this trip`s about to end. Perspective is difficult to find in a drunken haze.

--rahul

The Difficult Decisions that One Faces on the Road

2005-12-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

One of the most striking things about travelling in Mexico is how gorgeous the buses are. Seriously. After a few months in Guatemala and Honduras, where the infamous ¨chicken buses¨--converted American school buses packed with four people (and yes, the occasional chicken) to each two-seater bench seat--rule the road, Mexico`s buses are luxury incarnate. Reclining seats, foot rests, Steven Seagal movies, and even, gasp, bathrooms on board. No longer do you have to make that unfortunate decision to either dehydrate yourself or face the possibility of riding on a four-hour bumpy road while you tightly cross your legs and pray for a bathroom stop.

Instead, in Mexico, you get to decide whether to try to stand up and pee while the bus hurtles down the highway and might just possibly take a turn hard and send you hurtling through the door with your pants down because you forgot to lock it properly, or to sit down and pee and therefore emasculate yourself. There are no easy answers.

--rahul

48 hours and no kidnapping yet...

2005-12-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

No, no, just kidding. Mexico City´s really not so bad. We´ve been walking the streets at night, going out to dinners and drinks in the fancy hipster neighborhoods, hanging out in the main square with chocolate-filled churros and sparklers (not chocolate-filled). Mexico City wins the ¨Best City that Everyone Told Me Was the Worst City and You Should Run Away Screaming From¨ Award.

--rahul

All Roads Lead to the Virgin of Guadalupe

2005-12-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

I´ve arrived in Mexico City, home of 10 million people and the worst air pollution in the world. Whoopeee! As an added plus, you´re not supposed to walk out onto the street and hail a taxi here at any time of day because the risk of armed robbery and abduction is too high. As they say in Spanish, ¨Eso es wack.¨

In a couple hours, my buddies Colin and Bryan will fly in and we´ll begin our ten-day journey back into America. But not before we go to a massive-ass religious festival tomorrow. Over a million pilgrims from around the country are converging on the capital to honor Guadalupe, the Mexican version of the Virgin Mary, who apparently magically materialized on someone´s cloak 500 years ago and has been the country´s saint ever since. If you want something, anything, in Mexico you pray to Guadalupe. For the last 200 miles of my bus ride in today, the sides of the highway were lined with people walking and biking with huge framed portraits of Guadalupe tied onto their backs. I seriously must have seen 50,000 people on this one road into Mexico City. Not since freshman year when I dated a woman in the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship have I seen virginity so celebrated.

--rahul

Not exactly a shocking revelation, this

2005-12-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

After I got over the initial sadness of losing my favorite travel buddy to real adult responsibilities, I thought to myself ¨Hey, this´ll be great! Just like old times! Just me by myself on the road, doing whatever I want whenever I want.¨ Then I spent most of today quixotically following riot police in body armor around Oaxaca hoping that I might get to see them fire tear-gas on a crowd somewhere. And I went to my favorite restaurant (the home of lard-free mole) to sheepishly make a reservation for, ahem, one. I`ve started talking to myself and cuddling up with the spare pillow at night. The lesson: Meg makes travel better.

--rahul

Countries are Different

2005-12-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

You know how when you go to the theater to watch a movie, there`ll usually be a public service anouncement mixed in with the previews, like maybe the Will Rogers Institute asking for money, or the government telling you that your brain will turn into a fried egg if you smoke pot? Well, in Mexico, the public service announcement before movies encourages kids to not bribe their high school teachers for better grades.

Baby, It Ain´t Over Yet

2005-12-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

Right now, Meg´s in Texas shopping for an interview suit and hopefully feasting on baby carrots and hummus. And I´m starting to get emails mourning the end of TMTTV, as one of our most faithful readers graciously dubs it. Hey! I´m still in Mexico! It´s exotic. There´s still lots of brown people around. The risk of explosive diarrhea still looms. And we´ve still got buttloads of photos and stories and deep, profound, life-changing insights to share! So don´t go leaving us just yet, allright? Especially now that my partner in crime and favorite editor in the world isn´t around to put the kibosh on my worst tendencies toward sickeningly flowery language, overuse of apostrophes and parentheticals, and unnecessarily casual grammar, I´m gonna start getting really crazy. This blog is going to have more almost-but-not-quite endings than a Lord of the Rings movie. We´ve got stories from Detroit we´re still grilling up, we´ve got our ¨100 (or whatever number it ends up being) Best Photos of the Trip¨ and don´t even get me started on what´s gonna happen in 2006 when I move to Oregon and become a cowboy. We´re addicted. We´re just getting started.

But then, superego temporarily overcomes id: Actually, feel free to stop reading whenever you want. The fact that anyone ever looked at this thing makes us happy.

--rahul

You can never have too many thanksgivings

2005-12-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

I knew the day would come whether I liked it or not, and so it has. The trip I had dreamed about for a decade has come to an end. Rahul and I stood outside our hostel in Antigua this morning waiting for our shuttles to come and whisk us away--he to the Mexican border and I to the airport. His came first, and it was not with dry eyes that I said goodbye and watched him head off into the darkness, minus his partner in crime for the last two weeks of his journey.

Being home is wonderful, even if the being home for good part is hard to swallow. Reuniting with my parents, my aunt and my puppy dog felt damn good, as did a hot shower, my comfy bed and all my favorite foods. My mom treated me to the Thanksgiving dinner I had missed, which was heaven, and once we had sufficiently stuffed ourselves we decorated the Christmas tree while Pavarotti serenaded us in the background. This time last night Rahul and I were gorging ourselves on 50 cent tostadas and papusas in the street, prepared by an adorable elderly husband and wife team who run their small food stand every afternoon until it's all gone.

It's jarring to leave behind the life I have been leading on the road for the past eleven months, to return in a snap to my real life back home. But if there's one thing I've learned this year, it's how insanely fortunate I am that these are the lives I get to live. It blows my mind that this year is over, but even more that it happened at all. As countless people from all over the world have told me all year, I am a lucky girl.

- Meg

T-minus 48 Hours!!!

2005-12-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

In 48 hours, Meg´s year around the world will come to an end, and she will be eating dinner with her parents in Houston (leftover Thanksgiving goodies thanks to her awesome Momma and freezers). She is somewhat at peace with that idea and somewhat in denial and somewhat freaking out.

We intended to set today, the last non-travel day we had together, aside to ¨do nothing whatsoever¨ and to reflect on all the amazing things we´ve seen and done this year. But we caught wind of spectacular spectacular thrills just around the corner from our little hippie haven, and we couldn´t resist. And so we ended up swimming through caves with a candle in our hands (trying to keep them lit as we plunged behind waterfalls and shimmied along slimy bat dung walls), jumping off a bridge into a turquoise river, and tubing down a river at sunset with a bottle of wine. A fitting last day.

There`s much more in the way of reflections from us coming before the end of this year. Meg´s off to the East coast to start interviewing for residency, and Rahul`s heading back towards Texas overland to join La Familia Pearsone for Navidad in Houston. Stay tuned.

La Frontera

2005-12-02T16:39:00.000-08:00

Most border crossings take you through total bungholes (Rahul´s picturing Malawi-Tanzania, Germany-Poland, and Tijuana right now) filled with tractor-trailers, crooked moneychangers, and dudes who look like they´re sizing you up and trying to decide whether to beat you up or just jack your bags. But crossing from Honduras to Guatemala takes you through a beautiful little town (Copan Ruinas) and pastoral (or, dare we say, bucolic) countryside, and the van drivers help you navigate immigration and wait for you to clear customs before they drive, asking you if you´d like them to stop at a bathroom on their way out. Meg was already smitten with our ayudante for this display of toilet chivalry, but when he brought our bags down from the roof when it started to rain (doing some kind of crazy flip maneuver onto and off of the roof while the car was moving), even Rahul started crushing on him hard.

The highlight of the drive was when Meg started to peel an orange and the dude next to her promptly whipped out his machete to try to help. When we declined his offer, he gave us two more oranges instead. So next time you´re in the mood to cross a border, we highly recommend Honduras-Guatemala. Good times!

The five days on the island of Roatan with our friend Kimmy were spectacular. We managed to get recruited as ringers for quiz-night at a local beach bar (coming in second only because we didn´t know that Madonna and Michael Jackson were born in the same year), bike in a quixotic search for dolphins, and leave with over 50 sand-fly bites each on Kimmy´s and Rahul´s bodies (apparently Meg´s skin is delicious only to mosquitos). Also, good times!

Tomorrow, we search for Guatemalan caves and limestone pools.

The Island

2005-11-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

First of all, we must give some blog love to Jon, who took a big chunk of his vacation time to come out for a Honduran Thanksgiving, complete with 10 long bus rides and a rough hike to another country. The highlight might have been in Tegucigalpa when we went to a Chinese restaurant and Jon started busting out some Mandarin on the waitress who had a big shocked smile on her face when she heard the gringo speaking her mother tongue in Latin America. You rock, Jon!

We're on the absolutely gorgeous island of Roatan now, hanging out with the splendiferous Kimmy and fixin' to hop on bikes for a day of tropical exploration. We like our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

IMGP2441
Originally uploaded by meg and rahul.

"Home" has become a moving target for me this year. Of course we know that our home is with our family in America and nothing's ever gonna replace it, but we've tried to find a couple places on the road to come as close as they can. The Kathmandu Peace Guest House was like that for us, our base for explorations out into the Himalayas, Tibet, and the jungle. We came and went four different times, and the guys there always saved the same room for us, put up with our 17 day mountain stink, and, with big smiles on their faces, always said "Welcome Home."

Now, on Thanksgiving, home is the Hombro a Hombro clinic in Santa Lucia. My buddy Jon and I spent the last 5 days on Honduras' Carribean coast, realizing that we had wandered into the aftermath of Tropical Storm Gamma only when our bus took a 3 hour detour past washed-out bridges and flooded homes. We started heading home on Tuesday, hoping we could find enough detours and patched roads to make it back to Meg by Thanksgiving. It took us five buses (riding on the roof of the last one for 3 hours on dirt roads because there was no room for us inside), a $20 taxi ride, and a mile-long hike around a hole that could eat a truck in the middle of a flooded road, but last night we arrived.

And today the three of us hiked to El Salvador, riding a poor man's zip line over a river to cross the border. For our feast tonight, we're sans turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing, but we've got Honduran chow mein (what?) and dark chocolate that Jon brought from America for us.

Don't get us wrong: if we could teleport ourselves to Texas, California, Florida, and Wisconsin to be with our families for a real Thanksgiving feast, we'd do it in a second. But short of that, we've got 3 friends, some good food, and a temporary home to give thanks for. The pilgrims would be proud.

--rahul

The little things

2005-11-19T15:03:00.000-08:00

It´s 3am, I´m two hours into my 10-hour trip to Tegucigalpa to meet my buddy Jon at the airport for his one-week Honduran vacation. The old school bus I´m riding in just started hitting the big bumps and the lady next to me handed me her two-year old to hold for the rest of the ride while she takes care of her four other kids. I realize that I will sleep no more and am about to become cranky. And then suddenly, the radio station, after playing 10 straight merengue songs, switches to 15 minutes of ¨Piano Man¨, ¨Hotel California¨, and ¨Time After Time¨. Thank you Mr. DJ. I needed some America.

--rahul

Guatemala makes people crrrrazzzy!

2005-11-15T19:14:00.000-08:00

But then crazy drunk French man showed up
Originally uploaded by meg and rahul.

Do you want to see Mayan ruins? Do you want to see Rahul's girlfriend from high school? Do you want to see this half-naked French man who wears pants on his head? Click on the photos link on the side for our Guatemala slideshow. Stories of Detroit coming soon.

I can't believe it's not Detroit!

2005-11-09T19:41:00.000-08:00

It's good to be 30
Originally uploaded by meg and rahul.

We've got more photos up! We decided that Detroit just wasn't photogenic enough, and that our pictures would look much cooler if we downloaded photos of Cuba off the internet and photoshopped ourselves in. Isn't technology just the best?!

Click on the Photos link on the right for the wrath of Wilma, latin Lolitas, and pimp rides.

You want me to drink what?!?

2005-11-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

And guess who got the worm
Originally uploaded by meg and rahul.

Our photos from Mexico are up. Some of them vanished into the depths of Meg's ailing 2001 laptop, but hey, quality over quantity, right?

We can't link to them from where we are, but go to http://flickr.com/photos/rahuljyoung/sets/954761/
to see Rumsfeld, the worm, and a cool chica from Greensboro.

The Birthday Love

2005-11-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

A birthday card from Sara
Originally uploaded by meg and rahul.

We've made it to the remote town of Santa Lucia Honduras. We know it's remote, not because it took us 6 buses from the Guatemalan border to get here, including the last one which took 5 hours to go 40 miles, but because whenever we told people where we were going, they looked at us with either that "I don't know what the hell you're talking about" look or the "You gringos are freakin' crazy" look.

But now that we're here, we couldn't be happier. The little town is gorgeous, Meg started her rotation today, and we have to sleep in different rooms to respect the Christian sensibilities of the locals (okay, we could be a little happier about that part). But it's great to be here, and we're settled in enough to be able to catch up on our stories and photos from the last few weeks.

Exhibit A: a birthday card from Sara, our rockin' neighbor in Oaxaca. Sara's actually got a great boyfriend back in Greensboro, and given the choice, would probably much rather grab Meg's butt than Rahul's (but then again, who wouldn't), but she sure knows how to make an old man feel like a playah. We're hoping that Sara's search for a Master's program in Mexican history dramatically collides with Meg's search for a rockin' internal medicine residency and we all land in the same place. Hey Sara, move to the West Coast! Please!

Mighty Good

2005-11-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

We´re back from Detroit, in Guatemala, and on our way to Honduras. But not before getting a couple days hanging out with old friends! My long-ago high school sweetheart Margaret (check out her award-winning (seriously) and critically acclaimed blogs mightygirl.net and mightygoods.net), her husband Bryan and their friends Rachel and Erin changed their Belize vacation plans so we could meet up in a town in the middle of a lake for a couple days. We love friends who come see us! You should come too! Only a few weeks left before we´re back in America for good.....

We´re still recovering from ten days of salsa and cigars, but for now, we will just say that Detroit is a wonderful, crazy place. Everyone should go there.

--rahul

Turning 30

2005-10-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

29 was the age I always dreamed of being. I was 19, at a concert, standing behind a group of guys in their 40s with beers in their hands talking about how 29 was when it all came together for them, when they had figured out what they wanted in life, but hadn´t made so many commitments that they felt old. What they said stayed with me over the next decade, a string tied around my fnger, reminding me to make 29 an epic year. Or, at the very least, to make it a year I could wax nostalgic about during my eventual midlife crisis.

And I guess I´ve succeeded at that. I won´t ever flip out and buy a sports car (unless it´s a fully restored early 90s Bright Calypso Green Metallic Ford Probe with a completely rebuilt 4-cylinder engine), but I´m sure the day will come when I´ll look at a mortgage payment or a tuition bill and dream of the days we spent in Kathmandu and Istanbul, Zanzibar and Detroit.

I can´t deny that things have changed for me. Nowadays, instead of smoking pot, I get stoned staring at the iTunes Visualizer. When my head gets turned by a woman walking down the street, she inevitably has a kid trailing behind her. I worry that my favorite musicians will have strokes instead of overdoses.

This trip has made it clear that I´ve reached the age where life changes in a year. I was 25 the last time I took off to travel the world, alone. And when I returned, it seemed that most people´s lives were the same way they had been the year before. But now, in the 10 months since we got on that plane in San Francisco, I feel like everyone I know has up and moved on to something bigger, more ambitions, more grown-up. Z finished his PhD and became a professor, B conceived and became a father, C had a baby and got married. E became a rockstar in the world of social entrepreneurship, K (my ex) is in law school and will get married in a week, J started a new job and will probably be back in China any day now, C and A started business school, A moved in with her boyfriend, K bought a farm, and L left Nepal, landed in DC to be with S and changed careers. Nothing, or no one, it seems, is the same as when I left. We are growing up. We are doing amazing things. We are growing old.

Me, I´m unemployed, unmarried, unpregnant, a renter upon my return. I don´t have it all figured out. But, I have to admit, I kinda like it, being 30 and on the road. It´s hard to feel too old when you sleep in a new bed every day. And if you need to make peace with a change, to accept the fact that `old` happens, this, a city that in so many ways has resisted change, is a good place to do it. Nowhere makes old look beautiful the way that Detroit does. You drive down the street in a `53 Olds convertible and watch the pant peel off the Art Deco buildings and the balconies crumble away from the colonial walls. You let yourself believe that a little decay isn´t so bad.

Oh, and I should say, the other reason it´s good to turn 30 in Detroit is that everyone here is hairy. Since I´ve now reached the point where hair doesn´t grow in the places where I want and does in the places that I don´t (some might say I reached that point when I was 20, but don´t listen to them), it´s hard to explain how good it feels to be surrounded by men with hairy guts falling over their belts, women with Kahlo moustaches, boys with tufts poking through the buttons of their guyaberas, girls wearing tube tops that show off the treasure trail leading down from their bellybuttons. And the backs. Oh, the hairy hairy backs. In a place where any temperature over 70 degrees is justification for a guy to walk around topless, I just want to rip off my shirt and scream ¨Hombres, Mujeres (because, you know, a surprising number of people in Detroit speak Spanish), I am part of your hirsute brotherhood! Let us celebrate the rivers of hair cascading over our bodies and band together to destroy all waxing equipment and pictures of young hairless Abercrombie models!

Fortunately, I have not been drunk enough to do this yet. Also, there is no Abercrombie in Detroit. It´s just as well, for I suppose such antics are not appropriate for a man of my age. And so, instead, tonight we´ll eat gazpacho and ceviche, drink wine and rum, walk through the dark streets. And believe it when we say that 29 was great, and 30 will somehow, unexpectedly, unbelievably, be better.

--rahul

ps. I just opened up my inbox to a whole lot of email birthday love. To everyone who sent one out, thank you, thank you, thank you. I wish you were here in Detroit right now.

Oh beautiful Motor City, we come to thee

2005-10-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow at 6am, assuming the hurricane gets out of our damn way, we'll be flying to what was heretofore known as "secret birthday destination" and will henceforth be known as "Detroit." Detroit is a beautiful little place not too far from Guatemala that is particularly difficult to get to when you live in America, and we're planning to spend 10 days there doing all the things that Detroitians do -- drink rum, dance salsa and smoke, um, cigars.

Now we know what you're thinking: "They're going to Cuba!" No, no my friend. How dare you even think such a thing! Of course we wholeheartedly support our administration's policy that Cuba is a scary evil place whose lack of democracy represents a significant threat to Florida, Alabama, and all those other neighboring states that are teetering domino-like on the brink of Communism. And we believe fervently that it's completely logical and consistent to restrict travel to and trade with Cuba while encouraging trade and travel to anti-democratic, human-rights violating countries like, say, China. Anyone who says that the policy discrepancy has anything to do with China's overwhelming market opportunities for American companies and the presence of a rabid community of Cuban exiles in a certain Sunshine swing State should go back to listening to Air America.

That's why we're going to Detroit. Why would Rahul want to turn 30 in one of the world's most romantic, lusty, invigorating (oh let´s just say it, erotic) cities when he can instead blow out the candles in Detroit? Why would Meg, soon to be Dr. Meg, be interested in going to a developing country with a health care system so strong that people fly from countries throughout the Carribean to see the doctors there when she could instead check out the hospitals of Detroit? What could be the appeal of spending World Series week in the most baseball-mad country on Earth watching the Pearson family's beloved Astros battle against a team with two Cuban defectors on the pitching staff when instead we could watch the games in Detroit?

We sure don't know. That's why we're going to Detroit. Say it with us, Detroit. Dee-troit. Unfortunately, Detroit's email access is notorious throughout the region for being quite spotty, so there may not be too many updates between now and Nov. 2. But you never know. Detroit is full of surprises.

The Volcano, Part Dos

2005-10-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

When choosing where to spend the few days leading up to our flight out of Guatemala City, Antigua, with its colonial charm, seemed an obvious choice. Plus, it's home to FOUR, count 'em, FOUR volcanoes. Ahhhh, so many volcanoes to climb, so little time. Turns out it's also home to FOUR ZILLION tourists. Turns out too that we're not the only tourists who like to climb volcanoes.

We dragged ourselves out of bed this morning at the appalling hour of 5:45 (apologies to Meg's med school friends for whom that would count as sleeping in) to meet our "shuttle" to the volcano, about "45 minutes" away. Two hours later, our retired and tired American school bus and its 50+ gringo passengers arrived in the pueblo of San Francisco at the base of Pacaya. We bought some bananas from a shy little San Franciscan girl, and off we went. Our three guides had announced on the bus that all 50 of us should stick together ("Como una gran familia! ¡Que Bueno!"), but it quickly became apparent that this family was not meant to hike en masse. About five minutes into the climb, an over-eager American teen started *running* up the trail while a thirty-something woman was in negotiations with the men mounted on horses offering "taxis" to the top.

Eventually, la familia gringa was reunited at the top, where we munched on peanut butter and chocolate and checked out our surroundings. Pacaya is an active volcano that erupted four times in 2000 but hasn't spewed much lava to speak of since then. It does, however, blow off an impressive amount of hot noxious gas. Apparently today was an especially prolific day for Pacaya, and the dense mix of gas and low-lying clouds meant that we couldn't make it all the way to the crater. Bummer. But we didn't mind too much, cause we were sufficiently intrigued by the crazy yellow rocks, the old lava fields that look kinda like giant cow patties, and the sensation of being in an outdoor smelly sauna at 2800 meters.

We followed the signs back to San Francisco, and a few hours later here we are in an internet cafe listening to Michael Jackson and the Scorpions and typing on computers that are set to English instead of Espanol. We're half-expecting to see the Golden Gate Bridge and cable cars when we step outside. We haven't seen much of the real Guatemala yet, but if ever there was a time to hit the tourist meccas, it's during the World Series. Go 'stros!

To Waxahachie and Back Again

2005-10-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

Meg’s grandmother passed away two Saturdays ago. She had been sick for awhile and, to the extent that one can be prepared for the death of a loved one, everyone in the family was ready for the end. We flew back from Oaxaca to join with all the sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Waxahachie, Texas, where Meg’s dad grew up, and where her grandmother spent nearly all of her life.

At the memorial service, Johnny Pearson delivered a heck of a eulogy, reaching his goal of “not leaving a dry eye in the house.” We spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the rare opportunity to have almost the whole family together (just one great-grandchild short). We ate mountains of good ole Southern cookin', played some touch football, cheered on the Astros, ate some more, told all the classic family tall tales, celebrated Dunagan's 27th birthday, looked through old photos and letters of Grandma's, traded jokes in the kitchen, and kept on eatin'. As hard as we tried, we hardly made a dent in the endless stream of desserts that the neighbors kept bringing over. In the midst of our 10th piece of calf-slobber pie, we gave thanks for Southern hospitality.

It’s said sometimes that, in America, the only times families get together are for weddings and funerals. But Rahul grew up in Jersey with extended family in Kansas and India and attended virtually no big family gatherings, in celebration or in mourning. So spending a weekend amongst a couple dozen of Meg's relatives who had spent enough time together to know each other’s stories and to laugh at one another was an amazing thing to him. Being there made us both hope that as we get older, our families will never be so spread across the world that we can’t come together from time to time and sit in someone’s kitchen together for a few hours.

We’re in Guatemala now. We passed many landslides on the way here, fresh from the last hurricane that passed through, but the roads were pretty good, except for a couple places where 50-foot long stretches of highway had dropped 1000 feet into the valley. Thanks to hastily constructed detours, we were able to keep going.

We fly Monday to a certain forbidden land (more about that tomorrow) but we’ve got one eye on the hurricane predictions and we’re hoping the weather clears for us to be able to get there before Rahul’s 30th birthday on Thursday.

As great as the rest of our travels look, it was hard to leave America this time, saying goodbye again to Meg’s family, hearing the voices of the people we love on the phone, eating bagels and Thai food and Dairy Queen and drinking Shiners on the sofa. We did our best to cushion our return to the developing world by finding a hostel with cable TV so we could watch the Astros reach the World Series on Wednesday (Woooooohooooooo!!) and we’ll be heading to a bar called El Mono Loco (The Crazy Monkey) to watch Game 1 of the World Series tonight in Antigua.

But we miss home, Meg’s dog Abby, drinking water from the faucet, eating fresh fruit without a second thought. Our trip to Texas gave us a little taste of the life that we’ll return to in a couple months, and it looked damn good to us.

¡Viva la Revoluciòn!

2005-10-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

We made it to Chiapas yesterday (after a trip to Texas for Meg's grandmother's funeral--more about that in a couple days after we've collected our thoughts a bit). We didn't really know much about Chiapas except that some dude in ski masks were running amok here a few years ago and it's on the road from Oaxaca to Guatemala. But after 30 hours in San Cristobal de las Casas, we gotta say: Chiapas is flippin' sweet! It's got all the pretty colors and colonial cobblestone streets you could hope for, but it's high enough in the mountains that the Mexican heat and mosquitos seem to have evacuated to the Yucatan. There's vegetarian restaurants every few blocks and churros on the corner. There's pot-smoking hippies carrying guitars down the street. And there are Israelis everywhere. This is a good thing for two reasons: 1)if there are Israelis travelling somewhere, it's gotta be cool, and 2) it makes it easier to find restaurants with hummus.

As for the Zapatistas? Well, to be honest, we're not totally sure. We haven't come across any dudes in ski masks yet, but we did buy a ski mask-clad yarn-doll of Sub-Commandante Marcos. For only 1 dollar! Viva las socialist revolutions and the low prices they bring!

--rahul

Spanish Kicks Ass, Part 2

2005-10-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

The word ¨Wow!¨ (which actually shows up in just about every American movie there is), translates in Spanish subtitles as ¨Guao!¨ We heartily encourage you to say ¨Guao¨ for all future moments of amazement.

Also, Rev. Rahul shall ride again: On Memorial Day Sunday ´06, I´ll be officiating my good friend Ritu Chitkara´s wedding in Santa Cruz. All y´all out there who aren´t married yet and are looking for an incredibly cheap ministerial-knockoff, book early! Key spots are filling up.

--rahul

Spanish Kicks Ass, Part 1

2005-10-07T16:13:00.000-07:00

When watching a movie with the line ¨Tell me something I didn´t know!¨, the subtitle comes up as ¨Descubriste America!¨ (You Discovered America!)

By the way, Meg finished her residency application last week! Send her some love for all her hard work, wouldya? Only 5 months till Match Day....

--rahul

Stick, Stick, Stick, Stick....Stick

2005-10-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

It’s not every day that your parents fly down to visit you for a long weekend in a foreign country. It’s also not every day that they are (soon to be) celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary (!!). So when we got the thumbs-up for a Mexican rendezvous, we started dreaming up ways to commemorate the occasion Oaxacan-style.

We knew they'd be expecting the customary crazy hats, so we decided to catch them off-guard with “sombreros locos” instead. We hastily composed an anniversary ditty to the tune of “La Bamba,” the delivery of which suffered a bit from the hastiness (and Rahul’s handwriting), but we think that Mamacita and Daderoo dug it anyway. We’ll spare you the lyrics, except for the last line: “Stick, stick, stick, stick. Stick, stick, stick, stick. Anniversario. Stick.” And why on earth were we singing about sticks on their 30th anniversary, you might ask. We're sure we don't have to remind you that the 30th anniversary is the “Piñata Anniversary” (Duh!), and you can’t exactly beat the crap out of a piñata sin stick, now can you?

We then commenced with the obliteration of said piñata with said stick, with the help of mimosas and our friendly neighbors in Villa Maria, including the resident yellow lab, Rammy, who went ballistic when the candy started to drop. Once the piñata was liberated of all its crazy spicy Mexican sweets, we proceeded to the roof to feast upon our best attempt at a Oaxacan breakfast. There was a card, some tears from Mamacita, His and Hers chintzy glass rings and hugs all around.

The afternoon brought Mexican popsicles, Italian sodas and the “Mamas and Papas” New York Times crossword puzzle we’d been saving for the occasion. And then came the grand finale: a surprise, swanky 6-course dinner at Casa Oaxaca. We started at 8 and didn’t stop eating until sometime around midnight. There was a bottle of red, a bottle of white (ok, champagne), sorbet between courses, and lots of mole. When we weren’t eating, we were stealing glances at the C-list movie star we spotted a few tables down (don’t miss Nacho Libre, a Jack Black vehicle about a priest who moonlights as a wrestler in order to save his orphanage from bankruptcy, coming to theaters near you in 2006). We finished off with a cake that the waiters had prepared for the big 3-0, waddled home and fell into bed full of yummy food and love for the Padres Pearson.

We wish that we could be there for the real day (October 11th), but we’re psyched that we got another weekend together during this year of travel.

Click here for the photos. Viva Oaxaca! Viva Mamacita and Daderoo! Here’s to 30 more years!

Blammo!

2005-10-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

Many apologies for our blogging slackerness lately. We´re still recovering from an epic weekend (full details and photos tomorrow) and we promise that this, our last week in Oaxaca before hitting the road again, will be chock full o´bloggy goodness. For now, here's a little tidbit of life down here: Mexicans love blowing things up. Any minor celebration is an excuse to light firecrackers and M80s and let them explode through the night. Sunday afternoon we ran into a parade that was apparently a local neighborhood deciding to get together, play trumpets and dance with huge papier mache puppets, and celebrate their awesome neighborhoodliness by making things go boom, causing us to flinch repeatedly and get 'Nam flashbacks. Then, Sunday night, the Mexican Under-17 soccer team won the Youth World Cup (stomping Brazil 3-0), which led to everyone spontaneously running through the streets, shirtless men draping themselves in the flag and jumping up and down in pickup trucks and, yes, intensely loud fireworks filling the sky until sunrise. This needs to happen in America: next time some podunk Little League team from Kansas manages to beat Taiwan in the World Series, I'm getting naked and setting off cherry bombs.

--rahul

Men in Tights

2005-09-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true that we've settled into domestic life pretty comfortably here in Oaxaca.

Yes, we have a 10-class yoga membership, a video rental card, nightly salsa lessons, a yellow lab, a first-name relationship with a local vegetable seller and 90 year-old neighbors who talk our ears off whenever we come home.

But does that mean we've become totally complacent and unfun? No way! I mean, it did take us 3 weeks to take our first swig of mezcal and we haven't stayed up past midnight yet, but damnit, we're still cool. We went to see Mexican wrestling!

The "Lucha Libre" is kind of like what would happen if the WWF (nee WWE) took advantage of NAFTA and outsourced its minor minor minor league south of the border. It's got all the key stuff - people alternately screaming into a mic and slamming each other into the ground, rabid fans who dress like their favorite stars, folding chairs to spice up the action, and most importantly, oily men with huge pecs. It also has midgets. And goats. And midgets dressed like midget goats.

We made our way to the local high school gym, grabbed some seats, and sat in a strange mix of awe and ennui as men costumed like clowns, cumbia dancers, huns, barbarians, and, yes, goats pretended to beat each other up.

I'll spare you the blow-by-blow descriptions except to say that the absolute highlight of the night was in the first of five matches, when the midget goat entered the ring and proceeded to hurl itself repeatedly into the opposing team's asses. It was all downhill from there.

But there was something beautiful about watching fathers and sons in the alcohol-free crowd bonding over the bitch slaps in front of them, and then leaving the echoing gymnasium into the late-night streets of Oaxaca knowing that American culture is not alone in its moments of absolute degeneration.

--rahul

ps. In a couple hours, my beloved Oakland A's start a 4-game series against the, ahem, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. To have any real chance of going to the playoffs, they have to sweep all four games. For those of you more theistically inclined than me, if you wouldn't mind giving Huston Street and the rest of the boys a shout-out tonight when you're talking with God, I'd appreciate it. Go A's.

Hair be gone

2005-09-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is. We've achieved baldness, at least two chins, and even some Mexican spirit there in the background. This, mis compañeros, is a quality photo. The barber was remarkably nonplussed when I asked to go "calvo", but there were some dudes walking by on the street who were a little amused at seeing so much gringo skin. Overall, I´m diggin´the new look and the knowledge that I´m gonna save at least $2 this month on shampoo.

We've begun Operation Tan The Head and with the Oaxacan sun on our side, I should be bronze in no time. Y´all come on down south o´ the border if you wanna rub the noggin'.

--rahul

All Quiet on the Pearson Front

2005-09-24T16:21:00.000-07:00

Hola amigos,

We´ve had some requests for some blog reassurance that la familia Pearson is safe and sound in Houston. We´re happy to be the bearers of good news. Momma Pearson is riding out Rita´s wrath in the house with four Teach for America refugees from Katrina (quite the hurricane magnets, aren´t they?), Abby the lab is hiding under the bed and crying, and Daderoo fled to California on a bike. Everyone´s safe.

We tried to get in on the natural disaster action by ordering up an earthquake in Oaxaca last night, but unfortunately, it was so mild that we didn´t even feel it and just found out about it today from our neighbors.

Thanks for all the good wishes for the Pearsons and Texans and Louisianans everywhere. Tune in tomorrow for some stories about our trip to Mexican wrestling and a glimpse at Rahul´s new shiny apple.

A Cowboy Wedding

2005-09-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

And finally, we give you the pictures from the wedding in Wallowa. Y´all come on in to see some tight-ass Wranglers, beautiful ladies, and the coolest bride, groom and seven-month old we´ve ever seen.

Can you hear the music?

2005-09-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

All right, we're in the homestretch of photos now. It's hard to do justice to karaoke without audio clips from the night, but hey, with photos like this one, you can't go wrong! Click here for Karaoke Madness!

The time has come

2005-09-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

Just in case you thought we had any shreds of dignity or propriety left, we present you our Kilimanjaro and Beyond photo slideshow.

Note to Ali-mac's mom: We're so grateful to have you as one of our biggest blog fans that we went back to the Safari slideshow to add a "very special Ali-mac photo". We hope you like it.

Beaches, bonding, lions boning

2005-09-16T16:13:00.000-07:00

We're going wild with photos. Wild. Wild! Next up, our 2 weeks in Zanzibar and on safari with Ali-mac and Simon. Click here to see two lions flagrante en derelicto (or something like that), hot yoga bootie, and Rahul using a pineapple for eeeevillll.

Man With Gun

2005-09-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Hola amigos! Ethiopia and Nairobi photos are up. Click on the links to see dudes with weapons, fanatical Ethiopian foosball players, asses of zebras, our trip to Hooters, and important advice about how to not get carjacked in Kenya.

La vida dulce

2005-09-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

Here we are in Mexico, nestling into a new life of stability that we haven´t seen since, well, last year. We rented an apartment, and we ain't leavin' for a whole month! We're researching salsa classes, getting memberships at local video stores, and playing pickup soccer with bemused teenagers.

Meg started Spanish school on Monday and at night is feverishly working on her residency application. Rahul, inspired by Meg's diligence, is making the bed, going grocery shopping, and reading old copies of US Weekly. Speaking of which, you in America may have heard this already, but Brad Pitt totally dumped Jennifer Anniston to hook up with Angelina Jolie! Man, it feels good to be back in touch with current events.

Anyways, we´re on pace to break all kinds of records for the year, like:

-- Most consecutive nights that Rahul has slept in the same bed: 6 (as of tonight, but only if we make it back from Mexican Independence Day celebrations)
--Most days without cracking a Lonely Planet: 5
--Most straight meals that we've cooked ourselves: 5 straight dinners (that's actually a record for Rahul in any year)

We've got a sweet roof deck where we can eat dinner, stare at the mountains and read el periodico while the sun sets. And we've even got a yellow lab named Rami to keep us company and lick our faces.

All in all, we're pretty psyched. And if any of this sounds compelling to y'all, we're putting out an open invitation to everyone out there to come visit us. If you can find a cheap flight to Oaxaca before Oct. 10, you've got a free place to stay and we'll cover you from head to toe with mole. Seriously, come see us. We'll make it worth your while.

--rahul

Eritrea photos are up!

2005-09-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Now that we're on super-fast Mexican internet, we're finally catching up on posting our Africa photos. Today, the 3 weeks we spent in Eritrea practicing medicine (Meg) and wandering the streets (Rahul)!! We've even thrown in some gonzo Saudi airport pictures. Click on the link for burkhas, sandstorms, markets, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, and a very important public service anouncement.

America, Act III

2005-09-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here’s a question: Actually if you've been reading this, you've already read this question, twice, so who really needs to read it again? We love America! We love it!! So, instead, here's another question: If you had found the love of your life and were ready to get married and spend the rest of your days with them, would you choose a single, commitment-phobe, unminister who doesn't dress particulary well and hasn't had any real responsibilities for the last year to perform the ceremony? Yeah, neither would we.

Act III
As we got on the plane at LaGuardia last week (leg 3 of our 20-hour train-bus-plane-car journey from New Haven to Wallowa, Oregon), we were exhausted. And, I gotta admit, I was a little nervous. A year ago, my friend Cory and her fiancée Dave had asked me to perform their wedding, and after 12 months of thinking about it in various countries around the world, I was still completely clueless. Yes, I had my online ordination from the Universal Life Church and some sample ceremonies from my real-life Unitarian minister dad and an old professor friend named Gil. Yes, I knew that when you've got two people in love getting hitched in a beautiful place, all a minister's gotta do is stay out of the way and not fall over and everything'll take care of itself. But I clearly don’t have any first-hand experience at being married, and I know there are some ex-girlfriends out there who can vouch for the fact that I’m far from the world’s best boyfriend. Having quit my job for the second time in five years to feed my wanderlust, I’m not exactly a model of commitment. All in all, I seemed like a pretty poor choice to be dispensing marital wisdom as anyone's minister, but hey, how could I say no? Since I've never gotten to be a best man, groomsman, bridesmaid, ring bearer, or, sob, even flower-girl, I figured I couldn’t pass this one up.

Instead of writing a ceremony, I procrastinated my way through our transportation day, hitting rock bottom when I spent a decent chunk of the drive from Portland listening to Rush Limbaugh talk about some dudes who were recently hospitalized for having sex with horses. Man, I hate Rush, but still, I had to laugh when he hit his predictable punchline: "I wonder, I don't know, but I wonder, how many of those men were... Democrats?" Radical right radio rocks.

We made it out to Wallowa around midnight, and kicked off the wedding festivities the next morning around 7am with a two-day mulepacking trip into the mountains, giving us some much needed wilderness and wedding planning time. Since the mules were doing all the hard work, we were well-stocked with wine, tequila and Pringles for a few days. After some fishing and a hike up a 10,000 foot peak, Cory and Dave and I sat down in a field for an hour and somehow came up with a ceremony. The husband-and-wife-to-be had already done the hard work and figured out what they wanted to say, and all I had to do was help Cory convince Dave, cowboy poet that he is, that his vows didn't have to rhyme.

So after getting back into town and setting up some hay bales for the pews (narrowly avoiding an angry hornet's nest camped out in one of the bales), throwing on the most expensive outfit I've ever owned that wasn't made of vinyl, and cueing our guitarist to play the Tennessee Waltz for the procession down the aisle, they did it! Tears were shed, Cory looked absolutely beautiful, Dave was handsome as could be, they said "I Do" and kissed one another, and our friend Ritu sang "Come Away With Me" to wrap it all up. It was gorgeous, and I was relieved not to have screwed it up.

We made our way out to the ranch that Cory and Dave run, grabbed some kegs, set up some chairs, flipped some burgers, and watched the whole county stream in to dance the night away to the cowboy (not country, ahem) music of Wylie and the Wild West. You probably don't know Wylie, but you've heard him; he's the yodeler in the "Yahooooooooo" commercial. I borrowed some of Dave's tight-ass Wranglers, threw on a hat he had just bought for me for $2, and donned a psychadelic t-shirt that he insisted came straight from the closet of John Fogarty of CCR. After taking a look around the festivities at midnight, I'm sure of this: every wedding needs a yodeler and as many pairs of tight-ass wranglers as possible.

Meg and I scraped ourselves together the next day, signed a marriage license, and drove back to Portland, stopping for a blackberry shake and a Tillamook cheeseburger in someplace called Burgerville in The Dalles. We sprinted to REI to stock up on stuff for Latin America, and had a reunion with our friend Gurbrinder from India over Oregon microbrews. The next morning, after a hummus run at a local natural foods store, we got on the plane to Mexico, with a stop in Houston for some quality time with Cathy Pearson and her awe-inspiring chocolate-chip cookies.

And now we're in Oaxaca, still soaking in the love after our 10 days in America, and slowly kicking our sleep debt after averaging about 5 hours a night for the last couple weeks. We'll be gringoing it here for a month, so we'll save las cuentas mexicanas for another day. Somehow, the karaoke, the families, the pizza, the friends, the wedding, the yodeling all seem like a dream to us, as crazy and rockin' as anything we found among the nomads in Tibet or deep in the Serengeti. It was good to be home.

--rahul

America, Act II

2005-09-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

Meet with important Yale medical people to prepare residency application
Go for a run in East Rock Park
See all the med school people she's been missing for the last year

Rahul:

Watch as many movies as possibe in his one free night (thus giving Meg for "girl talk time", which basically means "talk about Rahul time")
Eat more pizza than anyone would think possible (thus obliterating the India-diarrhea weight loss he had achieved earlier in the year)
See all the med school people he's been missing for the last year (not that he's in med school, but at times, it kinda felt like it)

Who says that being unemployed for 8 months kills your ambition? We're happy to report that we achieved all of our goals. Meg sounded like Tom Waits (thanks to karaoke) for her big meetings but came out with some quality feedback from her profs, we actually motivated to run up a thousand feet or so to the top of the park, and her friends were awesome about clearing out time to hang with her (special kudos to Andie for flying out from Raleigh). Rahul hit the local multiplex for a Batman Begins/War of the Worlds double feature, went to three rival pizza joints (12 pieces total) in 4 hours, and got to feel the friend love as well.

We gotta say though, it was kinda weird being there for a couple days. Unlike New York, which has always been a crazy weekend destination for us, New Haven was Meg's home last year (and Rahul's second home), so it was a bit jarring to slip back into the world of real responsibilities (well, for Meg anyway) knowing that we'd head back to the developing world a week later.

And now for some random thoughts from Rahul:

I know that Tom Cruise is all into Scientology and is prone to wiggin' out at random times but I like the dude mostly because no one looks cooler when he runs. I think it should be written in to all of his scripts that he gets one scene where he's running frantically and emoting at the same time. Actually I think that that's already happened--War of the Worlds (running away from aliens for 2 hours while trying to protect his daughter), Jerry Maguire (running through the airport so that he can tell Renee Zelwegger that she completes him), Vanilla Sky (running through Times Square so he can start screaming uncontrollably), Top Gun (running to his F-16 so that he can start blowing people up), Magnolia (running to his car so that he can have an unexpected musical interlude and then cry over his dying father), Born on the Fourth of July (oh, mmm, wheelchair, oops)
New Haven may or may not be the "birthplace of pizza" as it likes to claim, but if you want to taste the best pizza available outside of Paramus, NJ, go to Modern A Pizzeria on State Street. It blows Pepe's and Bar's iconocastic mashed potato pizza out of the water.

Tomorrow, the third and final act-- in which Meg and Rahul fly to Oregon, eat meat for 5 straight days, help a friend get married, and dance the two-step while a guy named Wiley yodels.

America, Act I

2005-09-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a question: After quitting your job, taking a break from med school, and spending all of 2005 traveling to some of the most beautiful, exotic, invigorating places in the world, places you've been fantasizing about for a lifetime, is it a bad thing if your favorite part of the whole year is the ten days you spend in America?

Act I
We landed at JFK around 10pm on a Friday night and were greeted at customs by our friend Kimmy, a particularly joyful and appropriate reunion since she was the one who dropped us off at SFO to begin this crazy journey 8 months (and change) ago. With 18 hours of air travel under our belt and a date with karaoke looming the next night, the sensible thing to do would have been to go to bed, go directly to bed, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Do not go to a speakeasy in the West Village, do not reunite with your sobbing mother, do not stay up late drinking beers with your family and friends who flew in to see you. Whatevah.

The next morning we woke up at 7:30 am and went for a run in Central Park. We'd like to thank jetlag for making that possible. Schlepped uptown to feast on the bagels and pizza Rahul had been dreaming of, and spent the afternoon attempting, but failing, to nap in preparation for the night's festivities.

And then came karaoke. It was a rager. A massive-ass rager. Meg's Daderoo stole Kwray's fabulous blue wig and wouldn't relinquish it till he needed his cowboy hat to sing David Allen Coe. Rahul's dad and stepmom wowed the crowd with an adorable, and surprisingly empathetic, rendition of "When I'm Sixty-Four". Meg's Mommacita made her karaoke debut with the ambitious "Stand By Your Man", and was so swept away that she stayed up all night dreaming about all the songs she wished she had sung. Or will sing once she finds a karaoke joint in Houston to drag all her friends to.

As the night progressed and we were feelin' the love (and the tequila), we started making our way up the steep emotional arc of karaoke. Meg cried her eyes out when her med school friends Cat and Eliza showed up. The Pearson kids lost all inhibitions and got together to serenade their squeezes with some "Sexual Healin'". In response, Mandy, Candy, and, um, Randy (it rhymes), busted out the Divinyls' "I Touch Myself", fervently avoiding eye contact with the Pearson parents throughout the performance. As our pre-arranged stopping time of 2am approached, the party wasn't even close to winding down, so we convinced the friendly IBop owners to let us stay as long as our throats could hold out (and beyond).

We finally called it a night around 4am, and dragged our butts home, filled with the singing love and shuddering at the thought of waking up for brunch the next morning. Our caterwalling crew suffered a few casualties (courtesy of Kimmy and her Cuervo crusade), but we think everyone's recovered by now. Except for Ali-mac, who's still sporting a thumb-splint after Bustin' A Move overzealously. Good thing she's in radio.

We'd like to give one last shout out to everyone who drove and flew out to celebrate with us. We love you! Special props to Melora, for donating us her amazing West Village flat and for helping us find the speakeasy, the Latin-Asian fusion diner, and the swanky brunch spot.

Tune in tomorrow for Act II - in which our protagonists head up to New Haven to meet with professors (Meg) and eat pizza and watch movies (Rahul).

Karaoke Post Abridged

2005-09-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

We're in America, we're safe, and we're loving life. Just got back from two days mulepacking in the beautiful Wallowa Mountains in eastern Oregon, and Rahul's frantically throwing together a wedding ceremony for our friends Cory and Dave who're getting married tomorrow, seeing as he's the "minister" and all.

Our karaoke shindig was far too unbelievably amazing for us to do it justice with a post now, so unfortunately, photos and stories will probably have to wait till we get to Mexico next week. But in the meantime, let us just say that the Pearson and Young families and friends came out in force, donning foot-long frankfurter hats and blue wigs and singing late late late into the night. Meg still hasn't gotten her voice back, Rahul thinks he broke a toe, and all of our hearts were won by a certain vixen who sang "99 Luftballons" in the original German. The night took our obscenely high expectations and happily obliterated all of them.

More to come once we reach Oaxaca....

Out of Africa

2005-08-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning we fly away, back to America. We're spending our last day in Nairobi--Rahul's doing some last-minute gift shopping for upcoming birthdays and weddings while Meg's researching residency programs and working on Version 1298 of her (awesome) personal statement for her application. Africa's been really good to us, and deep down we know that we've got all kinds of sadness brewing about leaving the dark continent, but we'll save most of that for another day because right now we're just so damn happy to be heading back home (or close to it, at least) to sing our lungs out with the people we love. Bagels, pizza, karaoke, moms and dads, bros and sisses, here we come!!

Semper Fi

2005-08-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

It's official, I'm now a Marine. Realizing that I was 2 weeks away from having to convince a bunch of cowboys in Oregon that I'm qualified to be a minister for my friend Cory's wedding, I went to the local barbershop in Moshi, Tanzania and asked them to clean up my mop by "taking a little bit off the top." As I realized later, they didn't understand a word of English and saw my arrival as an opportunity to let "the new barber" try out his skills on strange white-man hair. And now I have no hair.

It's okay, though. My plan's always been to get to Mexico in September and shave it all off. A pre-emptive strike on male pattern baldness, if you will. So I guess I might as well get on board the hair nostalgia train now. Plus, Meg thinks it's sexy. "Agassi-esque", she says. I suspect that she's just being a good girlfriend, but I'll take it.

--rahul

Ethiopia vs......Chico State

2005-08-24T00:48:00.000-07:00

(Editor's note: We're feeling all kinds of guest blog love now! This one comes from Zanja. His name means "irrigation ditch" in Spanish, he somehow managed to spend the past 8 years living in Manhattan on a $16K/year grad student salary and SAVED money, and now he's about to broaden the minds of hungover frat boys as Chico St.'s new Professor of the Philosophy of Science. Hit it Zanj.)

Yikes! I've been lapped! I was in Africa with Rahul and Meg before Ali, and I promised a guest blog, but now I see that she has already submitted her guest entry. So I've been shamed into writing something.

Meg and Rahul were insistent that I reveal some of the darker side of travel with them, but I think Ali has pretty well taken care of that, so I feel relieved of that obligation. My most immediate experience now is not Africa, but my first day of teaching at Cal State Chico. But some of my more memorable interactions in Africa, Ethiopia especially, were with the youth. So let me offer this humble comparison between the youth of Chico State and the youth of Ethiopia!

The youth of Chico State are mostly white. (80%)
The youth of Ethiopia are mostly black. (99.99%)

The youth of Chico State desperately want a downtown parking structure so they don't have to drive around looking for parking.
The youth of Ethiopia desperately want shoes.

The youth of Chico State are bummed when they have classes on Thursday, as it makes it harder to enjoy Wednesday night partying.
The youth of Ethiopia are bummed when they can't attend any classes until they are fourteen years old because they have been herding goats their entire childhood.

The youth of Chico State have names like Kyle and Jessica.
The youth of Ethiopia have names like Hailu and Tashaga.

The youth of Chico State are friendly and smile a lot.
The youth of Ethiopia are friendly and smile a lot.

The youth of Chico State really like football.
The youth of Ethiopia really like foosball. (And they're really good, too)

The youth of Chico State make $6.75 to $14.52 per hour at their campus work-study jobs.
The youth of Ethiopia make 7 birrh (about 85 cents) per day doing back-breaking construction work.

The youth of Chico State like bio-diesel (well they should, anyway)
The youth of Ethiopia like Vin Diesel (well, at least one of them, anyway)

The youth of Chico State share music online.
The youth of Ethiopia share music by sending their voices and the notes of their flutes through the mists that rest above rolling green hills and waterfalls.

The youth of Chico State never say "brrrr" in August, because it's too damn hot.
The youth of Ethiopia often say "birrrrh" in July, when tourists are around with cameras in hand. (The birr is the Ethiopian unit of currency --ed.)

The youth of Chico State like to ride bicycles to campus.
The youth of Ethiopia like to chase bicycles up rocky dirt roads, then grab on to the ends, and give struggling faranji helpful pushes.

--zanja

BEWARE THE GUEST BLOG

2005-08-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: Well, we'd been saying that our guest blogs did a little too much ass-kissing...but thanks to the fabulous Ali-mac, all that's over now. Meg's psyched, because she'll never have to field small bladder accusations again. So there. Hah! Enjoy. And next time you hear a touchy-feely NPR piece on All Things Considered "produced by Alison MacAdam", remember that big-shot radio people sometimes have to pee into a pitcher in the back of Land Rovers too....

Okay. We all love Meg and Rahul, and have read this blog all year with guffaws, delight, and pride for having such cool friends/family. But isn't there that little part of you... say, the nasty side... who has just beeen HATING this blog as well? Are you like me? Sitting in a grey-lined cubicle at work, or looking out your apartment window at...zzzzz... America... are you thinking, "I am so pathetic sitting here while Meg and Rahul are sipping yak butter tea and scaling mountains next door to Everest." ? Well, hopefully I'm not alone in feeling a little bit jealous. So let's bust open this little happy Meg-and-Rahul-Land RIGHT NOW!

I had the privilege - along with my boyfriend Simon - of becoming part of the adventure in Tanzania. That's why I'm guest-blogging. On our last night together, Rahul observed I had "strident views about inconsequential things." So here goes: I'm NOT gonna tell you about the amazing, hilarious adventures we had. I'm gonna tell you about the sucky, stinky, hair-so-dirty-it sticks-to-your-fingers part of this trip.

Let's start with Meg's clothes. This girl has worn the same THREE outfits for about 8 months. You can imagine they might get a little, say, dusty. But more importantly, woman, what happened to your sense of style?? Meg likes to wear this embroidered blue and red peasant blouse with an orange checked skirt. Phew! I am telling you... you can see this woman coming miles away. Zanzibari police had to book her for clashing (it's a serious offense in Muslim society).

Rahul? Nope, not much better. He's also, as you might note from previous blogs, taken to wearing too little, too often. I mean...wearing NOTHING. Bailing him out of the Stone Town Prison for the Unclothed and Unwashed took longer than it takes to read the latest Harry Potter.

On to hair. Of course, bigger problem for Meg than Rahul. Meg and I sat on the prow of the tossing ferry from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam to avoid complete barfiness. We were having this great girl-chat, but the whole time I was watching as Meg allowed her unconfined hair to be blown so absolutely back towards the island that by the time we reached our destination, it was all pointing to the right. Shameless.

Speaking of the ferry... it will turn the strongest stomachs. This ferry tossed you like a washing machine, but with less regularity. I imagine it was a bit like riding a bronco... but you really looking sexier riding a bronco than tossing on this Tanzanian Barf Machine. (To our credit, even the weakest stomach of us made it to Dar successfully.)

One more note about Zanzibar and basic hygiene: Remember how when you're at the beach you have to make a serious effort to keep sand from getting it EVERY crevice? Well, we did some yoga on the beach in Matemwe. I oh-so-delicately place my towel in the sand so I could downward-dog and cobra without getting covered in it. Meg and Rahul? Uh-uh. No towel. Just laid down straight in the sand with no regard for those vulnerable crevices.

Let's talk now about safari. If you were going on safari in Africa, would you ask for it to be VEGETARIAN?? Hell, no! The country known for ugali (the staple: cornmeal mush... BIG hunks of it!) is not the spot for a 5-day catered veggie trip. Especially on a budget. The first day the vegetable mush came out with rice, we were pleased. The second day it came out with pasta, we (I) gulped up a LOT of dry pasta. The third day? We all stared at the bowl of veggies floating in unidentified tomato matter as our stomachs cried out, "NO MORE VEGGIE MUSH!" Fourth day, it was cooked into a pie. Filling, but requiring speedy post-lunch trips to the latrines. And the fifth day, accompanying potatoes. Hello, Tanzania! Which one is the main course??

(A note on Tanzanian beverages: Beware the bright orange "Chemi-Cola"! Read instructions first.)

Now - on to the scatalogical (Mom, you can stop reading if you want.). First of all, growing up with Meg, I knew she often got the trademarked "sudden urge to pee." Now - I know why. Since safari involves peeing IN the Land Cruiser or getting your butt bit off by a lion - we used a handy Tupperware pitcher. Fun thing about a pitcher is that you can measure things! Let me tell you, Meg Pearson can almost fill a pitcher of lemonade! I am not kidding - anyone who tells you we are all the same is WRONG. You could make an official NBA basketball out of Meg's bladder.

One of Meg's sudden urges almost got her in a lot of trouble, too. About 20 feet from our campsite on the rim of the Ngorogoro Crater, we saw two elephants busy eating out of the trash pile. Very funny, very cute. Well, Meg decides to pop a squat about 15 feet to the left. All of a sudden a third elephant appears, stomping towards her hiding place in the bushes, snorting, tusks brandished. Megger, this isn't camp Monterey! You can't just pop a squat in elephant territory!

Not to pile on Meg... let me tell you something about Rahul. Some of you who've spent time with him in closed up spaces -- say, college dormrooms or his car -- will already know this fact. That boy has got the most insidious, stinkiest..... Well, you know what I mean.

So all in all - traveling's a joy, and it's a bitch. You get smelly and crusty and your hands dry out from too much hand sanitizer. Your butt gets chafed from toilet paper the texture of sandpaper. And Meg and Rahul seem frighteningly comfortable with all of it.

Nonetheless, everyone, go out and travel with Meg and Rahul. It will make you love them more --- and LOVE home, too.

(PS - By the way, we had a blast.)
(PPS - Cathy Pearson, I promise you Meg's general instinct towards cleanliness is simply hibernating!) (Hey, where's the reassuring message to Rahul's mom about his hygiene?--ed.)

--ali-mac

The Pearson Boys Deliver the Goods!

2005-08-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Dunagan and Philip, our long-lost photos from Italy and Egypt are up and hilariously captioned. Head to flickr and check out the Pearson handiwork.

It Takes A Village

2005-08-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

We embarked upon our Kilimanjaro expedition on a chilly, drizzly Sunday morning, well-rested, suitably carbo-loaded, sporting freshly laundered undies, and feeling newly invigorated by the ice-cold shower provided by our hostel. We threw our backpacks into the Bobby Tours van, and off we went to the volcano! We made it about 1 kilometer before the van suddenly sputtered and died. The Bobby boys seemed uncannily familiar with this scenario and immediately dispatched their youngest member out of the van and into the rain, gas jug in hand. A few litres of gas and several able-bodied van pushers later, we were back on the road.

For Rahul, this was the lesser of two bumps along our road to happy volcanoland, for we were soon to discover that our two hiking companions to-be were none other than his arch-enemies: FRENCHIES! Would six days with snooty, self-righteous frogs force Rahul to hurl himself into the volcano or would he finally overcome his ridiculous Francophobia and give them a chance? As you can probably guess, Marianne and Frank turned out to be superchouette Kili companions and damn tough climbing cookies. Since Rahul failed to come clean on the trail about his (ahem, previous) disdain for the French, he hopes that they won't be too shocked to learn of his pigheaded bias, and he promises to never insult the French again.

After innumerable stops along the way, our Franco-American love van reached the gates Kilimanjaro National Park, and we found ourselves in the company of 150 other mzungus all set to climb Kili with us. Along with the 400 porters and guides that accompany them along the way. Having grown accustomed to the self-sufficiency and relative solitude of backpacking trips back home, we were shocked to discover that our team of 4 whities was to be escorted up the mountain by no less than 12 Africans! 12! For the next 4 days, we were like little ants marching in a line with matching fancy fleece and daypacks boasting built-in "air-coolant and water systems," while our porters sped by in their scrappy shoes and ripped cotton sweatshirts, carrying 25 kilos on their heads. After years of Kili anticipation, we were a bit disillusioned.

But then came Summit Day. We awoke at 12:30am to a thermos of tea and some biscuits our sleepy stomachs didn't want, and hit the trail. The moon was full so we turned our headlamps off, fell in behind the hundred other people on the trail and started up the gravelly hill. An hour in we started singing Hotel California, conspiring with some rowdy South Africans ahead of us to try to liven up the "funeral march" feeling that was permeating our parade up the mountain. But then the wind picked up, cutting through all 5 layers of clothes we had on, and for the next five hours, we cocooned into our gore-tex, staring at the feet of the person in front of us, praying for the sun to rise.

And when it did rise, around 6am, we yelped with joy, and at 6:45 we reached Uhuru Peak, "the rooftop of Africa", 19,340 feet up and 20 below zero celsius. The view of the glacier at the top (which, thanks to global warming, will probably be gone in 15 years) at sunrise, with clouds blanketing the mountain beneath it, is one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring, humbling things we have ever seen.

After some quick photo-ops (more on that later), we hustled back down the hill, skiing with our boots down the gravel scree, proud of ourselves as we looked at the hill we had just climbed and trying to understand how we were supposed to spend the rest of the day getting ourselves down 10,000 feet without falling over from exhaustion.

We made it down, and were again reminded of the perils of not controlling your own trip. For the next 10 hours, all our cook could scrape together for our ravenous bodies was some soup. And on the last day, we had to try to figure out what the correct etiquette is for tipping 12 people who just took you up to 19,000 feet.

But we're back now and we're safe. And we can't wait for our next chance to buy Annie's mac and cheese, head to Yosemite, and lead ourselves into the backcountry the American way- no porters, no cooks, no one else but us. But for all the crowds and the cold and the reliance on strangers to subsist in the wild, you gotta climb Kili someday. The moonlit walk to see the sun rise over the glacier makes it all worthwhile. And then some. Go. It'll blow your mind.

And about those photos. For those of you who know us well, the obvious question to ask is: are there are any, how shall we say this, naked pictures of us in -20 degree temperatures at the top of Kilimanjaro? The answer is: come to karaoke and find out.

Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel

2005-08-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

We've got 20 minutes of internet time left before we have to run-off to see a bootlegged screening of War of the Worlds, showing in Tanzania but apparently dubbed in Spanish and subtitled in English. It's a shame really. Tom Cruise speaking Swahili would have been something special.

We said goodbye to Ali-mac and Simon last night, after an afternoon walk through a Masai village and an epic game of Spades. Our sadness at their departure was tempered only by the fact that they're gonna make the long trek up from DC in two weeks for our massive-ass karaoke rager. Rockin'!!

The craziest thing about our 5 days on safari was realizing how short our attention spans have become. On Day 1, the sight of any moving creature, from a bird to a rodent to an antelope, was enough to make us stop the jeep for 10 minutes to revel in its beauty. By Day 5, we had seen so many lions and leopards and cheetahs and elephants that there were only two things that could tear us away from Harry Potter -- seeing animals hunt each other or screw. Honestly, we were chanting "kill, kill, fuck, fuck" from the top of the jeep, eschewing our vegetarianism and sense of decency for the chance to see the wildest of the wild. When we watched a female lion stalk two baby gazelles for an hour and then miss eating them by 6 inches, we were severely disappointed. But on the morning of the last day, when we came across two lions "on their honeymoon" as our driver Halifa euphemistically called it, we watched intently, along with 20 other jeepfuls of people, as Mr. and Mrs. Lion did it twice in 15 minutes. Given that each encounter only lasted for 10 seconds, we suspect we got more enjoyment from the experience than Mrs. Lion did.

And now, after many many years of dreaming about it, we leave tomorrow to go to the volcano, and climb Kilimanjaro. If all goes well, we'll be at 19,000 feet around 6am Thursday morning and back in civilization by Friday afternoon. As Joe would say, we'll jump and we'll see.

Into the Wild

2005-08-06T22:54:00.000-07:00

We're taking off in about 5 minutes for 5 days of mzungu (Swahili for pasty white man) safari. If all goes well, tomorrow night we'll be camping in the middle of the Serengeti, drinking box wine and being too afraid to get out of our tent in the middle of the night to pee because a lion might eat us. Sweet.

--rahul

The Beach

2005-08-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

We've seen a lot of paradise on this trip. The top of the Himalayas, a rooftop in Amalfi, the back of a galloping donkey in Egypt. But Matemwe Beach on Zanzibar takes all the cliches of paradise, wraps 'em up together in a bundle, swings them around and around and makes you believe that yes, there are a few perfect spots left in the world. White sand stretching for miles, turquoise water, little kids in brightly colored dresses dancing around and singing at sunset, and a secret beach out in the middle of the water that's far enough away from civilization that in the middle of the afternoon you can strip off your clothes and dance naked with your friends. Hypothetically.

--rahul

Penetration....

2005-08-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

Ali Mac and her man Simon hit the Zanzibar tarmac a couple days ago and we greeted them with guitars, funny hats, and bicycles. The beauty of tiny islands is that you can do things like biking to the airport to meet your friends. This is only the second coolest airport greeting for Meg given that in the Virgin Islands she was able to take a dinghy to the airport to pick someone up, but nevertheless we were pretty proud of ourselves. A side note: U2's Bad is one of the all-time great songs to parody because of the whole sequence of rhyming words that ends with --ation. When we serenaded Ali and Simon, we started with adoration, progressed to fornication, and it just went downhill from there. A side side note: Ali and Simon had their own song-and-dance routine prepared for us and Simon, despite being as white as can be, can freestyle like nobody's business. We will force him to showcase his honky rap skills at the massive-ass karaoke rager (T-minus 24 days...).

--rahul and meg

The long road to the isle of Zanzibar

2005-07-31T01:40:00.000-07:00

After an 11-hour bus ride (it was supposed to take 6), and a 6-hour ferry ride (it was supposed to take 3), we made it to Zanzibar! Found a cheap place to stay, took a much-needed shower, headed out to the street food stalls on the ocean, and paid $.20 for a big glass of fresh sugarcane lime juice while feasting on barbequed tuna skewers and roasted cassava. It's good here. It's really good here.

--rahul

You know the travel gods are smiling upon you when . . .

2005-07-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

. . . on a Thursday night, in the dusty town of Arusha, you come upon an evening screening of "The Big Lebowski", one of the great cinematic achievements of our time, at the town's Natural History Museum. We love the Swahili culture.

--meg and rahul

Stayin' Alive

2005-07-27T03:53:00.000-07:00

Nairobi is a strange place. You get here, you read your guidebook, and one of the first factoids you see is that "37 percent of Nairobi residents were mugged last year." When you walk down the streets, you pass public-service signs that say things like "Stay Alive! Avoid Carjacking! If you see someone stranded on the side of the road at night, don't stop for them!" Nairobbery, as jaded backpackers like to call it, supposedly recently overtook Johannesburg for the dubious honor of Most Dangerous City in Africa. Whoopeee!!

At the same time, the Western colonial influence is here in force. Everyone speaks beautifully accented proper English and there are swanky cafes downtown where you can eat cinnamon-swirl french toast and do the Sunday Times crossword (it took us about 25 minutes thanks to Zanj, Yes!). Sure, there's a guard outside the swanky cafe wearing a baseball helmet and carrying a machine gun, but other than that, it's just like being on the Upper West Side.

We're doing all the things you're supposed to do to stay safe here - not carrying a bag, never looking at a map while walking down the street, taking a taxi if you're going further than half-a-block at night. When I got into a cab at 4:30am to head to the airport to pick up Meg for our long-awaited reunion (which, by the way, totally rocked!), I warily scanned the streets for thugs and told the driver not to stop at any red lights. I admit that I'll be pretty psyched tomorrow once we get on a bus to make our way into Tanzania and towards our upcoming reunion with friends on the isle of Zanzibar.

But we managed to clear out some time to drive 10 miles out of town on safari to Nairobi National Park to see some zebras and giraffes and warthogs and ostriches. And yesterday we went to out the rich expat suburb to grab some Indian food and walk through a mall. You know you've spent too much time in the developing world when you get really excited about walking through a mall.

And, given that our hotel is officially on the border of the area where "you don't go out at night unless you're armed", we've been drinking a lot of wine and playing Hearts in our room and the bar downstairs once the sun goes down. But I'm not complaining. Amidst our mountain treks and jungle safaris, wine and cards with my girlfriend and my college buddy in a Nairobi hotel room is pretty damn sweet.

--rahul

...And it Feels So Good

2005-07-27T03:23:00.000-07:00

Eleven Days. It used to be that eleven days was a pretty short stretch for us to go without seeing each other. This time last year, when we were on opposite coasts, we'd say goodbye on Sunday, and if there was only one weekend between us and the next Friday when we'd meet, we were psyched!! Nowadays, after half-a-year on the road together, eleven days is an eternity, wrapped in an epoch, inside a long-ass time.

But it made our reunion so so sweet. Meg braved a 20-hour layover in the Cairo airport (and looked like she had just braved a 20-hour layover) to fly into Kenya at 5am last Saturday. Rahul braved a 4:30 wake-up alarm (and looked like he had just woken up at 4:30 am) and a cab ride through the streets of Nairobi to get to the arrival hall of the airport just in time. There were funny hats, there was a racy version of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" played on travel guitar, and there was much love in the air. It's good to be back...together.

--meg and rahul

Momma Pearson Speaks

2005-07-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

Our greatest treasures, Meg, Dunagan, and Philip (whose 23rd b-day is today! HB, Phil!) agreed to go to Italy with John and me. The initial plan was Egypt, but John and I gently suggested Italy. And, oh yes, Rahul Young only added to the fantastic mix. :) To reach this point in life, where our adult children still like (or so it seems) to hang with us, is such a compliment. I only hope that we can continue to have these extraordinary adventures. Growing older is all about creating memories, cherishing our children, and appreciating our good health and good fortune.

We didn't have any idea that Amalfi would offer such an ideal venue for a Pearson vacation. Everything worked: our flat (129 steps up!), being able to explore various sites at a leisurely pace, and even cramming in six hours of sightseeing and dinner in Rome at the end! I still find myself thinking about what we were doing this time a month ago. How could it already be over a month that we arrived?! I, like Dunagan, have looked at our pictures soooo many times. I loved our long lunches, our roof-terrace dinners (yes, Italian vacations do revolve around food!), the hilarious games of Celebrity, the APRONS they gave us for Parents' Day, the songs they made up. I could go on and on. It makes me happy and sad at the same time that one week can be fleeting and so incredibly meaningful. I want to do it all over again!

And now Meg has already finished her rotation in Asmara and is off to Kenya. Be safe, Meggie!

In another month, we'll all be together again making fools out of ourselves in some karaoke bar in Manhattan. Not exactly Amalfi, but hey--we'll be there! More memories. That's what it's all about.

- Mommacita

It's all fun and games until you lose a Rahul

2005-07-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry to report that the past 7 days in Asmara win the "Meg's least-exciting week of the year" award, in a landslide. Not that it's any reflection on Asmara, which is a very cool city with bars and outdoor cafes galore. The tedium is all mine. Not only am I lacking my partner-in-crime, but I am left with icky residency applications in his stead. A lot less sexy than bleeding-heart baboons, let me tell you. But for a good cause. Such a good cause that I have spent most of my waking hours outside of the hospital seated in front of various computers hoping that inspiration and well-turned phrases will pour forth.

In an attempt to cultivate more positive feelings toward my personal statement and to encourage myself to actually open the document instead of checking email, I decided to save it as "gelato." "Yaaay, I love gelato, yaaay! Let's double-click on this!" I fell for it the first few times, but then I wised up. Gelato.1 was unbearably bland ("I want to be an internist because I like biology and people too.") Gelato.2 was too saccharin to swallow ("I want to hand-feed all the starving children and cradle every HIV patient in my arms . . . " ) Now I'm onto Gelato.3, which, although still a far cry from Nutella-icious, is palatable and getting better with each bite.

In Rahul's absence I have turned to inanimate objects for companionship (no not like that, you sicko). My new best friend is the Microsoft Word animated paper-clip thingy, or "Office Assistant" as he is officially called. I think he looks like an "Al." Al and I have spent a lot of quality time together this week, and I have started to develop a bit of a crush on him. Have you ever noticed how cute it is when he yawns and slides down his piece of paper to take a nap? I don't want to make you jealous, Rahul, but I think he likes me too. He just batted his eyelids at me. And then turned into a star and spun around.

As I type this, "Hero" is playing on repeat in the computer lab where I am working (or not working, as is currently the case), and no one seems to mind. I am in danger of developing a case of intractable giggles if Enrique Iglesias whispers "Let me be your hero" one more time. "Am I in too deep . . . have I lost my mind?" The answer, I'm afraid, is yes. I think I've exceeded the recommended daily allowance of gelato. And cheesy Latino pop stars. Time for some fresh air.

-meg

Hail Ethiopia

2005-07-17T00:13:00.000-07:00

This is what most people see when they think of Ethiopia. It's the picture I had in my mind when I boarded a plane to Addis Abbaba and read in my guidebook that Ethiopia is the 3rd poorest country in the world. Yet in our few days here, the images that I keep seeing are of smiling kids wearing wool shawls while they herd sheep, Orthodox Christian priests walking solemnly down the street with wooden staffs in their hands, and mossy green mountains filled with barley and potato farms. Life is far from perfect here, but the people we meet are polite and shy and, as a Belgian professor we met said admiringly, "are proud and determined to be treated as equals."

Zanj and I just got back from a couple days hiking in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains. It was, in a word, unprecedented. Here are some of the firsts:

First time I've ever had to hire a guy carrying a semi-automatic weapon to protect us during a hike
First time Zanja's ever been hugged by a guy carrying a semi-automatic weapon (when we celebrated reaching the big peak of our climb and his enthusiasm boiled over)
First time I've actually enjoyed hanging out with French people (Dmitri and Julie, our other hiking partners)
First time I've ever been pelted by hailstones the size of golf balls, as I thought to myself, "It's the middle of summer, I'm in Africa, and it's freakin' hailing"
First time I've ever tried to re-stake a tent in the middle of a hailstorm, totally naked (all my clothes were drenched, I was trying to stay warm in the sleeping bag, and the tent was caving in).

It was a great trip. We got to see some "bleeding-heart" gelada baboons, so named because they have a big patch of skin on their chest that actually changes color (like a mood ring) depending on their, how do I say this, level of sexual excitement. Seeing these beautiful animals while hearing that global warming is wiping out their habitat and they'll probably be extinct in 50 years was an emotional moment for me, since I've loved monkeys ever since I was a kid and I've been getting angrier and angrier about my President's severely flawed environmental policy over the last few months. After having read a couple days earlier that Karl Rove had finally been outed as the person who sold-out a CIA agent in order to punish the one person in the Bush administration willing to speak the truth about Iraq's lack of weapons of mass destruction, I started having fantasies about putting George and Karl in a room with 20 bleeding-heart baboons, locking the door, and letting them "negotiate" the next Kyoto Protocol.

Then I realized that after being away from Meg for 6 days the main fantasy I was having involved a fat Republican and the word "protocol." The conclusion: I have issues.

Anyways, we made it up to 4000m, saw some jackals and ibex and all kinds of birds who's names I've already forgotten. The views were spectacular, and the people we met kept saying to us, "Tell people in America that this is what Ethopia really looks like." So there you are. Ethiopia, or at least the part we're in right now, is lush and full of rolling green hills, potato farms, and remarkably friendly people. It looks like Ireland, but with more black people.

--rahul

Absence...

2005-07-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

So after not spending more than four hours apart at any point for the last 6 months, Meg and I are separated for 12 days. She's wrapping up her rotation in Eritrea, and I'm in Ethiopia now with Zanja, my old college roommate, and soon-to-be professor of philosophy at Chico St. For those of you don't know Zanj, I'll just say that it's the perfect job for him.

My first day on my own was in the King Abdullah Jeddah airport in Saudi Arabia. I had a 24-hour layover there on the way to Ethiopia. I contemplated flouting the US State Dept's warnings that "no American citizens should travel to Saudi Arabia", but after reviewing my possessions at the time (a Red Sox cap, a frisbee, and a jar of peanut butter), I decided that there's no way I'd be able to keep a low, non-American profile and stayed in the airport. I did manage to bribe a security guard to let me step outside and stand on Saudi soil for 5 minutes. At first I tried to give him my copy of Noam Chomsky's The Hegemony of America, but for some reason he wasn't so pumped about reading any reactionary left-wing literature. So instead, I slipped him $5.

The only sleep I pulled off was on the Muslim prayer rugs in the corner of the airport, but around 4am I got bounced by a group of Muslims who wanted to use them to, y'know, pray. But after a couple days in Ethiopia, I'm well-rested and back on track. Tomorrow, we take off for some trekking in the Simien Mountains to see a group of "bleeding-heart" baboons. Maybe they'll be more psyched about the Chomsky.

But I miss my girlfriend.

--rahul

The Right Thing to Do

2005-07-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

When Meg and I left on this trip, we got a massive amount of support and good wishes, and a lot of long hugs as people asked us to promise to take care of ourselves and each other. Every once and a while, we'd dig a little deeper with the people we loved to find out what they were most worried about on our year away. The answer was always the same: Africa.

It's easy to understand why: weird tropical diseases, HIV-infection rates wiping out a generation, and widespread poverty ripping through a continent that's still struggling with the arbitrary borders and hierarchies created by colonialism. I'd be freaked out if someone I loved was going there too! And in case we needed any reminder of the horrors of darkest Africa, Meg and I went to an old Italian theater to watch a bootlegged DVD of Hotel Rwanda last Friday. I like to think of myself as a seasoned traveller who treats all people the same, but I gotta say, after watching a story about one million Rwandans massacring each other over the course of a few months, I found myself looking over my shoulder a bit more often as we walked home at night through the streets of Asmara.

I get angry at myself when I think about this, wondering if I'm letting embedded racism trump the overwhelmingly positive experience we've had in Africa so far. Though we've been on the continent for less than a month, we already have a dozen stories of kindness shown to us by strangers here. The random Egyptian man who spoke no English but saw we had given away the last of our Egyptian pounds getting to the wrong terminal for our flight, and picked us up and drove us 5 miles late at night for free . Our new friend Eden who happened to spend some time in Houston (and met a friend of Meg's Dad while she was there) putting us up for free when we arrived in Asmara and taking care of us for weeks. Tesfalidet, a 25 year-old English teacher, who met me on a bus heading to the town of Keren and changed all his plans so that he could show me around "his town" for the day, insisting on paying for my lunch and drinks along the way, asking only that I send him a letter once I got back to America. You ride the streets of Eritrea and you see burnt-out tanks and armored vehicles littering the ravines, reminders of a nasty war with Ethiopia and its allies that ended (mostly) not so long ago, only to give way to a famine from which people are still recovering. But Asmara feels safer than San Francisco, and the people we see around us, who must know that we're carrying enough money on our bodies to feed a village for years, are gracious and kind and take care of us.

And yet I watch Hotel Rwanda, I read about Darfur, I listen to radio reports about Liberia or Angola or the Ivory Coast or the Congo, and it scares me. I think about our upcoming destinations and worry about what strange African danger is lurking around the corner. And that's healthy, I suppose. It's better to be cautious, and I shouldn't generalize from my limited experience here. After all, I promised my momma I'd come home in one piece, and thinking that Nairobi will be safe because of some good experiences we've had in Asmara is kind of like saying that London is safe because we met some really nice people in Finland once.

But the fact is (and I know this won't make our moms feel any better), every day we're in situations where if someone really wanted to rob us (or worse) and take advantage of our white skin and inability to speak the local language, they could. Yet, every day we watch strangers bend over backwards to make our travels comfortable. And we try to be smart and accept their generosity without putting ourselves in dangerous situations. Yesterday, we spent ten minutes in a van, driven by a Eritrean and filled with 20 men from Yemen, arguing about the fare we were being charged (the amount we were sparring over - $2). As the Eritrean got angrier and angrier with us, one of the Yemenis stepped in, bridged the language gap and negotiated a compromise. We made friends with him over the rest of the drive as he proudly recited the English alphabet and celebrated the fact that his friend sitting next to him was the same age as Meg. Then, as we reached his stop and he got out of the van, he invited us for a ride with him and his friends in his fishing boat out in the Red Sea. Meg and I looked at each other, wanting to go, wanting the adventure and to trust in this man's kindness, and we said no. We couldn't make the leap and take the risk with a stranger who spoke very little English, putting our money and passports and lives in his hands when no one knew where we were. But I wonder now, would we have gone if it had been a nice white Aussie man making the offer? Probably.

The first priority for us is to come home safe. And I have no doubt that we made the smart decision, and we'll do the smart thing again, probably many times more before we leave Africa. But after all the goodness that we see around us in Africa, I wish that the horrifying images from Hotel Rwanda (and virtually every article on Africa you see in an American paper) weren't so overwhelming, and that the smart decision would also be the right decision, the one where you trust the people around you, even in Africa.

--rahul

Bodies at Rest

2005-07-07T04:55:00.000-07:00

One of the strangest, and most wonderful, parts of being on the road for a year straight is how little it takes to make you feel like you're settling down. After many months spending every couple days in a new city and a new bed, these 10 days in Asmara feel like we've found a little home in the northeast corner of Italo-Africa. Every morning, when Meg takes off for the hospital, I head to the cafe down the street, order a cappuccino (though my low tolerance for caffeine is making me consider switching back to tea so I stop freaking everyone out by jittering in my seat) and watch the world go by, occassionally reading a page or two from a book we bought about the Ethiopian-Eritrean war. I walk through the streets staring at the 50s era Art Deco architecture that the Italians brought here and jot down some ideas for an upcoming blog entry. After all the dramatic sights we've seen and exotic locales we've visited, so many of my favorite moments of the trip come from the rare moments where we get to play house. Last night, we cooked some dinner in the little pensione we're staying in, brought in some beers from the local bar (it's actually more expensive than just drinking them in the bar because you have to leave a deposit for the bottles) and worked on a NYT crossword that Cathy Pearson brought us from Texas. At one point, Meg came back from the bathroom with her pants inexplicably hiked up to her chin and couldn't stop giggling for 20 minutes. We collapsed on the bed and laughed at everything around us. Then we fell asleep as the cathedral across the street gonged, and I silently revelled in the fact that I won't have to pack up my bag again till Monday. Life off the road is good.

--rahul

Halfway Home!

2005-07-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, we passed the halfway point of our year-long around-the-world trip. Whoa. Well, actually, due to the unpredictability of Meg's upcoming medical residency interviews in December, we're probably more than halfway, but since July 3rd was exactly six months after the day we left Berkeley and boarded a plane, we're going with it! It's hard for us to believe that it's been half a year since we were able to eat burritos in the Mission, run in Golden Gate Park and flip on a cell phone anytime we wanted to talk to the people we love. Time's been moving incredibly fast for us, and we're going to use the next few days to take a deep breath and try to get our heads around the fact that we'll be home soon (okay Mommas Cathy and Madhavi, maybe not THAT soon, but it feels soon to us).

Meg started her medical rotation yesterday in Asmara, Eritrea, and Rahul's got a lot of time on his hands for the next week till he takes off to meet his buddy Zanja in Ethiopia. So while Meg's working, Rahul's gonna try to put up a new blog post every day to catch up on some of the stories that got lost in the spring when we were between internet cafes.

More importantly, we're planning a huge (some might even call it"massive-ass") karaoke bash in New York City, and we're hoping you'll all be there. It's on Saturday, August 27th and we've given the day it's very own blog. If you're anywhere on the Eastern seaboard, or if you're down to fly out to spend a weekend with us in the NYC, please come join us! It's our one chance to see all of you this year as we pass through America on the way from Nairobi to Oaxaca. No singing talent necessary - just enthusiasm and an undying love of Bon Jovi. Head to http://tothekaraoke.blogspot.com/ and let us know if you'll be there!

For now, here's some highlights from the last 6 months. We did these separately, so there may be some overlap (but hopefully not too much, since we're trying to end this trip with mostly separate identities). Hope you like it:

The Top 5 Moments So Far- Rahul:

Holi (India's festival of spring) with Meg and Courtney in the Indian Himalayas. We spent the day getting covered head to toe in colored powder by crazy Indian kids and stumbling across festivals and celebrations in a stark, picturesque village named Sangla near the Tibetan border.
Day 10 of our trek through the Nepali Himalayas. We awoke and hiked up Gokyo Ri peak, climbing 3000 feet up to 17,500 in under an hour. Once we got down, we hung out for a while, gathered up our things, and tried to hike to the next village, but got turned back after 20 minutes by a blinding snowstorm. Once the clouds cleared, we had a view of the longest glacier in the world covered in snow. Unfreakin'believable.
Donkey racing with Meg and her brothers in the shadow of Egypt's Valley of the Kings
Celebrating the Nepali New Year with my dad, stepmom, sister and her boyfriend in Kathmandu over apple pie and beer.
Feasting on Italian food, red wine, and gelato with the Pearson family at the Old Bear restaurant in Rome.

The Top 5 moments - Meg:

Non-stop adventures with my brothers, Dunagan and Philip, in Italy and Egypt: donkey-riding turned donkey-racing (and not being able to stop giggling the entire time) in Luxor, Egypt; spontaneous spelunking, rock-scrambling and skinny-dipping in a hidden grotto in Italy; and galloping through the Giza desert on gorgeous Arabian horses.
Evenings in the villa with my family in the Amalfi Coast, eating delicious food and drinking wine on the rooftop, wearing obscene aprons, and going head-to-head in heated Celebrity and Hearts.
Hiking with and hanging out with the crazy Israeli boys and Dirk in the breath-taking Nepali Himalayas.
The day in Dharamsala, India, (see "The Best Day So Far" blog post sometime in March) where we had nothing planned other than an early-morning jog, and then one fortuitous turn led to another, and we found ourselves eating masala instant noodles and drinking chai at the top of a snow-covered ridge with the tea-hut man who had hiked up only minutes before us to open his shop for the spring . . and then later when we found sushi in India(!) and Rahul's favorite travel-writer happened to be sitting right next to us. Just one of those charmed days.
Missing our connecting bus in Turkey and thinking ourselves stranded in a nondescript town, only to be picked up by a friendly Turk passing by and dropped off at the funky and homey Old Bridge House, where we ended up staying up 'til 3 in the morning partying (and reenacting fairy tales) with the uprorious hotel owners and our new Dutch friends who had just gotten engaged that day.

The most embarrassing moment - Meg:

That would have to be my infamous first day of medicine in India. For the full story, see the "My 15 Seconds of Fame" post in the blog sometime in early February. I can only bring myself to put it in writing once.

The most embarrassing moment - Rahul:

Every time I have to show my passport to an immigration official and he looks at me, clearly thinking "Jesus man, how could you possibly allow that photo to represent you for the next 10 years!"

The best food from each country - Rahul:

Balinese mee goreng, Indian chana masala, Nepali banana smoothies, Tibetan momo dumplings, Turkish yogurt(!) and dark Efes beer, Italian everything (but the red wine and nutella gelato were life-changing), and Egyptian baba ghanouj and fresh mango juice.

The best food from each country - Meg:

Bali: red, spiky gummy fruit thingies that we ate after biking in the mid-day sun; India: Tie: chana masala and Veena-mami's chai tea; Nepal: the best banana milkshakes in the world, from a little restaurant that the Israeli's put us onto; Tibet: momos (steamed veggie dumpling-type things); Turkey: mezzes (a mixed plate of spiced yogurt, eggplant salads, etc); Italy: everything, but nothing beats the gelato; Egypt: fresh mango juice from the juice shops that we somehow failed to discover until the end of the trip (but we made up for lost time by drinking it by the liter)

If I was in America for a day, here's what I'd do - Rahul:

Eat an everything bagel, fresh out of the oven, covered in double cream cheese and a slice of tomato
Go for a long long long bike ride through the Berkeley Hills
Recover from the bike ride by taking a long long long hot shower (note to green building colleagues: it goes without saying that the long long long shower is from captured rainwater and solar hot water, duh!) and watch Almost Famous (the Bootleg Cut) on DVD, singing along to the entire soundtrack
Invite all my friends over to shoot the shit over many bottles of two-buck Chuck and a home-cooked meal (tofu stirfry with peanut sauce, perhaps?)
Give my momma a huge hug and tell her I love her

If I could spend a few days in America right now, here's what I'd do - Meg:

Spend an entire evening with each of my girl friends: cooking dinner, eating it on the porch, and talking and drinking wine 'til we can't keep our eyes open.
Spend hours upside down and twisted all around at my favorite yoga studio in New Haven.
Go for a long, slow run on a trail somewhere beautiful--East Rock Park in New Haven or any Bay Area trail--wearing SHORTS, something I haven't been able to do all year without risking offense.
Get behind the wheel of a car for the first time in six months, with the windows down and the sunroof open, sing at the top of my lungs and drive nowhere in particular.
Get all my friends and family together in one place, go out for a long dinner and then stay up all night singing badly at a karaoke bar.

When We Turn on the IPod, the First Songs We Listen To Are - Meg:

Tori Amos - "Taxi Ride"
Tori Amos (yes, I'm obsessed)- "Tear in Your Hand"
U2 - "Bad"

When We Turn on the IPod, the First Songs We Listen To Are - Rahul:

"Hold On" - Tom Waits
"Out of Range" - Ani DiFranco
"That Was a Crazy Game of Poker" (16-minute live version) - O.A.R. (Thanks Aden and Dunny)

The Six Things I'm Most Looking Forward to in the Second Half of the Trip--Rahul:

Performing Cory's wedding in rural Oregon
Walking through the streets of Havana with Meg
Climbing Kilimanjaro
Writing the Great American Novel and learning how to surf in Honduras while Meg does her medical rotation
Reconnecting with all the people coming out to see us in Africa and Latin America (Zanja, Ali Mac and Simon, Erin and Mickey, Kimmy, Jon and hopefully some of the Pearsons....)
MASSIVE-ASS KARAOKE RAGER!!!

The Six Things I'm Most Looking Forward to in the Second Half of the Trip-Meg:

Safari in Tanzania with my childhood friend Ali-mac and her man, Simon
Climbing Kilimanjaro with Rahul
Learning enough Spanish to ask my future patients in Honduras intimate questions about their sex lives ("Do you have sex with men, women, or both?")without an interpreter
Walking the streets of Zanzibar, which Rahul tells me is one of the most romantic places he's ever seen
Sneaking into Cuba, another place Rahul says is romantic beyond belief
MASSIVE-ASS KARAOKE RAGER

That's all folks. Hope everyone out there is rockin'. We miss youz. And go to tothekaraoke.blogspot.com and tell us if you're coming to see us!

La Dolce Vita

2005-07-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

We're in Asmara, Eritrea, a surreal place in the northeast corner of Africa. Eritrea was once part of "The Cradle of Humanity", home to prehistoric peoples like the famous Lucy from back around 4,500,000 BC or so. More recently, it was colonized by Italy, then the British, and used to be part of Ethiopia, but managed to fight 'em all off and declared independence in 1993. Somehow the place has managed to integrate these diverse parts of its history into a seamless Afro-Italian mix. It's like being in a Fellini film starring Pam Grier and Richard Roundtree . The streets are tree-lined, safe and peaceful, unlike any other African capital city I've seen. People sit in outdoor cafes and sip cappuccinos (really good cappuccinos), speaking in Tigrinya, but greeting each other with three kisses on the cheek and saying "Ciao" as they depart. The main culinary choices are injera and shiro (spongy bread and chickpea puree), and pizza margherita. And somehow it all totally works together. We've been taken in by an impossibly beautiful woman named Eden who once lived in Houston and knows a former colleague of Meg's father (continuing our streak of receiving massive amounts of hospitality from people who barely know us).

Meg just started her three-week medical rotation today (that's #2 for the year). She's hoping that she'll make it through the day without collapsing and pooping on herself. I have faith in her. I'm kicking it in town for the next week before leaving for Ethiopia to meet my college roommate Zanja for 2 weeks of adventures.

Yesterday was the 6-month anniversary of the beginning of the trip. Whoa! We're celebrating tonight by drinking some wine we brought from Italy and cooking up some Annie's Mac and Cheese that Mama Pearson brought us all the way from America. Over the next week, while Meg's working, I'm gonna try to clear out some time to reflect on all that's happened since we began the journey. So for all you loyal blog checkers, I'll be posting a new story every day to try to make up for all those multi-week stretches where we couldn't get to the internet. For now, scroll down for Meg's brother's take on our travels together, and to get ready for our upcoming karaoke party (T-minus 8 weeks!). Ciao.

--rahul

Aug. 27 - Funny Hats - Bon Jovi - It's On

2005-07-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

Planning has begun for our prodigal return to America. It will involve karaoke. We miss you guys and want to see you. We have carrots and sticks available, as necessary, to ensure that you come play with us. Click here or on the link on the right and tell us if you're coming.

Dunny on Italgypt

2005-07-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

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:

I love my family, every little quirky crease.
From Egypt especially, the monetary price of goods, the price of goodness, of wholeness-- and how low that price can be.
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.
If you build your town into a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, people will come. People will most definitely come.
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

Where has all the gelato gone?

2005-06-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

We were planning to wait on our Italy post until we got to Eritrea, but we've been getting angry emails from friends of Meg's parents who want the dirt on Cathy and John's exploits on the Amalfi Coast and are threatening to boycott "TMTTV" (as one self-described addict dubbed it) unless we deliver the goods promptly. So without further ado, The Six Best Things About Our Week in Italy:

The Night Before: We arrived in Rome at 4pm, a mere 15 hours before the rest of the Pearson clan was scheduled to land. We knew that we could spend most of those hours asleep in a comfy hotel bed, or we could romp around town till their plane landed. Which one do you think we chose? On the train ride into downtown, we drained the mini-bottles of red wine we had nabbed from Alitalia (hey, when in Rome...), and proceeded to scamper through the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, a bunch of piazzas and charming cobblestone streets. We ate the hugest cone of gelato (Nutella flavor=genius) we'd ever seen, drank more wine in the Piazza Navona, marvelled at how lively the whole city was at midnight on a Monday, and spent the wee hours composing a song for the Pearson clan while sitting in the shadow of the Coliseum. Around 2:30am, we hit a wall and hopped on a bus back to the airport, where we slept on chairs in the arrival lounge till the Pearsons landed....
The Reunion: Cathy and John arrived first, and we stuck funny hats on their heads - a Turkish fez for John, and a funny Tibetan fur-flap number for Cathy. Cathy shocked us all by not breaking down in tears at the first sight of her daughter in six months, bringing into question her membership in the "Hormone Sisters" circle. But she and John hugged us tight, and we felt the love all around. Then Dunagan and Philip showed up, and the reunion was on. Rahul didn't quite know how to feel when everyone's first words to him were "Wow, you're so skinny now!" You too can lose 15 pounds in just 5 months on the developing country diet! Yay for diarrhea!
The Amalfi Villa: In a word, perfect. Not too fancy, not too shabby, not too big, not too small. But juuuust right. A mere 135 steps up from the street led us to a pretty little flat with our own roof deck (where we could drink wine and stare at the Mediterranean), washing machine (where we could wash away 5 months of accumulated nastiness from the road) and kitchen (where Meg could burn plastic pots to the stove).
The Food, Ah, The Food: Salad we could eat without worrying about peeing out of our butt the next day, water we could drink straight from the tap (wow!), homemade pasta (al dente, of course), luscious fresh fruit (including lemons bigger than your head), free-flowing wine, buffalo mozarella, cappuccinos and a brand new Magnum ice cream bar with bits of chocloate-covered espresso beans embedded in the chocolate shell. Every night, Rahul's hardest decision was: gelato, or Magnum; Magnum, or gelato? The answer, of course, was: both.
The Daily Excursions: Although we would have happily never left our little villa of paradise (especially because we knew that we'd have to climb 135 steps every time we came back), we actually managed to get out and see the rest of the Amalfi Coast. We ferried our way to Positano and the Isle of Capri, where we stumbled upon a chairlift to take us hundreds of meters to the top of the island. We walked down thousands of stairs from the town of Ravello back to our home as the sun set. And we went on a little hike out of our front door that led to a spontaneous skinny-dip in a grotto (a little river cave/canyon thingy). Photo evidence not to follow until Rahul gets a job and Meg gets into residency.
Parents' Day: Father's Day happened to fall on the next to last day of our week together, and since we were somewhere in Asia for Mother's Day, we decided to redub it: Parents' Day! We went to a five-star brunch at the aptly-named St. Caterina Hotel where we had our first wine-less meal (we had mimosas instead) and spotted our first celebrity of the trip - Maura Tierney from ER. We relaxed at home in the afternoon in preparation for the night's debauchery - the Pearson kids singing "Redneck Parents" - a spoof on Jerry Jeff Walker's classic, Redneck Mother. The Pearson parents paraded around in their new XXX aprons (starring well-placed tomato, basil, and sheep) given to them by their adoring children. Incriminating photo and video evidence will be posted in the next few days, we promise.

There's so much more we can say (how's that for subject-verb agreement, Cathy?), but we're hoping this'll give the TMTTV addicts the fix they need till Dunagan gets home and posts the photos on his super high-speed American internet connection. (Thanks Dunny for letting us spend our last day in Egypt seeing Islamic Cairo and eating hummus 5 times a day instead of being glued to a computer screen). Stay tuned for the scoop on our whirlwind tour through Egypt with the Pearson boys. For now, we leave for Eritrea in 26 hours and we're going to soak up as much Egyptian flavor as we can. So, arrivederci, and ma'as salaama!

My Ode to Turkey, Meg and Rahul

2005-06-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: We just got to Egypt today after an absolutely amazing week with the Pearsons in Italy in a gorgeous villa on the Amalfi coast of Italy. While we were enjoying countless 3-hour decadent meals, the stupendous Amy Dickie was working hard in our absence. This is the second in a series of "guest blogs" where we require the people who've travelled with us to extol our virtues and say as many nice things as they can in order to convince the rest of y'all to come out and visit us. Hope it works:

Turkey, Meg and Rahul - what a fantastic combination! Really, I cannot imagine a better travelling situation. After all, what other combination could provide several mosque visits, biking through canyons, brilliant navigation of the Istanbul ferry system while enjoying the views of the Bosphorus with a Nalgene of wine, rock jumping in the Mediterranean, insane amounts of bread, extended jovial visits with Charlie Chaplin, Ali the Jandarme, the hairy potter and his wife, Bekir, the thoughtful bike rental guy whose name continues to elude me, a plethora of crazy hats, conversations on everything from tampons to the US healthcare system, magnums, the whole Ihlara Valley walk, the most humorous bargaining ever, Tom Petty, raki, heated hearts and backgammon games and three overnight bus rides all in one week! In the words of both Cathy Pearson and Wesley Willis, you guys are AWESOME, or rather "ahsim". I love you. I miss you. Let's do it again. South East Asia 2009! :)

Hoşça kalin, Turkey!

2005-06-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

Meg hits the houka .

We've got some new photos up - Turkey, Tibet, and some karaoke shots in Kathmandu. We didn't get to finish all the captions. Forgive us.

We roll on to Rome tomorrow to meet the uproarious Pearson clan. It's going to be off the hizook. We've got many Turkey stories left to tell, but they'll have to wait. But for now, we'll just say: Go there! As soon as possible. It's an awesome place, it's changing fast, and it's only going to get more expensive. Turkey's been good to us.

The Future of Turkey Is In Your Hands

2005-06-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

The rockin' Amy Dickie takes off for Istanbul in 45 minutes, but we're not letting her go without a guest blog contribution. Yes! Amy came to Turkey straight from Switzerland and Greece, and as you know, we came here from India, Nepal, and Tibet, so we discovered early on that we have different perspectives on Turkey's place in the world. Amy found herself saying "whoa, you wouldn't see that in Europe" and we kept saying "whoa, you wouldn't see that in Asia." And, given that Turkey's now trying desperately to enter the European Union, and facing equally desperate opposition by countries like France because it's "not European enough," we thought we'd give you our take on this debate. You be the judge. Turkey: Europe or Asia?

"You wouldn't see that in Europe":

squat toilets that make you happy that there's nowhere to put your bum
leeches for sale
raw meat for sale in an open-air market
carpet vendors inviting you in for tea saying "hello lady, I have nice carpets, only looking, no buy, let me help you spend your money"
men selling spiral doodles on the street
men carrying multiple carpets on their backs walking down the street
a ten-seater bus carrying twenty people
tap water you have to iodinize in order to avoid diarrhea
currency where you pay for something worth 1 lira with a 5 lira bill and get 4,000,000 lira in change
prayer calls being broadcast over a loudspeaker and reverberating through the city
bad english store signs (e.g. Sorry, We're Open)
a $10 room, including breakfast and dinner

"You wouldn't see that in Asia":

bathrooms with toilet paper and soap
bathrooms that make you pay to pee that locals actually use instead of walking around the back and peeing on the wall (like rahul and meg did)
cobblestone streets with actual sidewalks
streets with stoplights, traffic lanes, and a general lack of farm animals
a new gleaming-white Mercedes Benz bus with neither chickens inside nor passengers on the roof and a conductor (wearing a bow tie) who chastises you for putting your feet on the seat
a subway that's cleaner than the one in New York City
salads that don't make you pee out of your butt a day later
men wearing speedos and women in thongs on the beach
a $10 room, including breakfast and dinner

We're not sophisticated enough to put an actual "vote" button on our website, but hey, we want to know your opinion. Use the Comment button below to cast your ballot.

--amy and meg and rahul

Soon to be, or perhaps already, totally uncool

2005-05-30T03:19:00.000-07:00

We spent yesterday afternoon in Kadikoy, the hipster suburb of Istanbul, hoping to get a random glimpse of Turkish life before we meet up with Amy Dickie (T-minus 30 minutes, yes!) and hit the road again. We ended up on the second floor of a four-story bar playing Turkish scrabble, drinking dark beer (finally) and smoking apple tobacco out of a houka while two local guys wailed on their acoustic guitars and waiters clapped in the background. As we looked around the room we realized that we were by far the oldest people in the place. Yikes. When did I start being the fogey in the bar? All the guys around me had hair gelled up into a faux-mohawk and wore black. Is this cool in America nowadays? I used to know the answer to this, but one day last year I looked at the Billboard Top 40 list and some chick named Chingy was at the top. Who the hell is Chingy? I always said I'd never be one of those parents who was out of touch with their kid's music, but here I am just short of 30 (T-minus 5 months, yes!) and I'm already hopelessly far from hip. I take solace only in the fact that Meg's even less aware of pop culture than I am, and thus even lamer than me.

---rahul

Bahraın - The New New Jersey?

2005-05-28T04:29:00.000-07:00

After spending the last 5 months exploring the height of Hindu and Buddhist civilization, you might think that we've peaked already in our search for culture. But you're wrong. Because in the sultanate of Bahrain (where we passed through on our flight from Kathmandu to Istanbul), amidst a sea of nouveau riche construction and fancy desert landscape, we found a Cinnabon outlet. Sweet jesus, the best part of my Jersey childhood (besides you, Mom and Dad, love you guys! you too, sis) doesn't exist in San Francisco anymore, but can now be found in the heart of the Middle East. Have I already mentioned how much I love globalization? Anyway, our 11 hour layover allowed me to have a midnight snack Cinnabon and a 2nd breakfast Cinnabon. I am happy.

We spent our last night in Kathmandu singing karaoke with my sister. Finally, after a search that began in January in Bali, we were finally able to get our mics (and swerve) on. The song selection was sparse, but there was just enough Scorpions to get us through the evening. Which reminds me, mark it down on your calendars - Aug. 27, we're hosting a huge-ass karaoke rager in New York City. If you're in the same time zone, you gotta come. We've already begun planning our setlist (and international costume selection). Details to come.

Now we're in Turkey, reeling from sticker shock after getting used to living on the cheap in Asia, but rockin' on. Today we sat down for a couple hours at an outdoor cafe to drink tea and play backgammon amidst a score of Turkish old men. They mocked me as Meg (gasp, a woman!) trounced me. We've already learned that no one here drinks Turkish coffee; we hope to soon discover whether the reputations of Turkish delight and Turkish prisons are similarly overblown.

rahul