An Insider's Perspective

First of all, I apologize for being long absent from this site. I have been thinking.

Matt and I fight. We bicker over petty things. I preach to him and he mocks me. Once, in Asia somewhere, Matt admitted he was wrong. I have never admitted such an impossibility.

Well you get the picture. As Matt put it once, "we are both Alpha males." While I am not really sure what this means... perhaps if you put a "beta" male in our hostel dorm we would eat him... it conveys the frequency with which we butt heads.

Having said that... there have been other times. While these are a bit more personal, I think you deserve to be given more of an "inside look" into our trip and our lives. Here are two snippets:

- We were looking for waterfalls. Matt did not drink much water before we set out and I decided to bushwack our way to the top of a mountain and then a "nearby" road/trail. Like I said, we were looking for waterfalls. Well we got a bit lost and a bit scracthed up. In the meantime, Matt had grown thoroughly dehydrated and consequently light headed. After much tromping around in a beautiful Thai rainforest, we decided to head back to our resort the shortest way we saw how. We headed straight down the mountainside through brush and felled trees. It took quite a bit longer than expected. The point of this story, is that on the mountainside we had "a moment." (A little bit more serious of a moment than the time in Dubai when we got matching Henna tatoos... of the sun. Come on... it was either a sun, snake, or scorpion. I picked the sun, Matt thought it was lame.) You know, one of those where dudes cry, and share their real feelings. A potent mixture of anger, fear, frustration, and no water produced a newfound appreciation for one another... We didn't bicker again for at least a day.

See Matt, dehydrated, here:

- Over a beer in an Irish bar in Hong Kong, I shared a bit about my faith with Matt. I had never talked about it with him before. (In high school I was afraid he or Brandon might think I was forcing something upon them.) I explained Christ in my life. Matt now knows me better. Matt talked about dealing with his Dad's death... and everything since. We talked about our families and our memorable and sometimes regrettable attitudes and interactions in them. We understood each other better. The next morning, I almost punched him in the face when he woke me up rather "ungracefully." By that I mean, playing the air guitar to some new techno song while standing over my head.

I happen to be positive (remember my infallibility) that both of us would love to correspond more about any of these moments or their topics of conversation. After all, many of you have claimed to be experiencing all this through us... so send the emails.

Pax Christi,
Dan

PS Don't you want a postcard? Just email me your address...

PPS I have never before had so much uninterrupted time for reflection. Travelling makes you think harder about where and who you have come from. Therefore, don't hesitate to email. I have 2 weeks left.