Welcome Home, Damon and Shannon

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Cleaning day. Aside from the fact that we have stuff all over the apartment, we have to make up for Aiye not being here either Tuesday or Friday. We assume it's because she took the week off for Chinese New Year/Spring Festival rather than because she couldn't tolerate having the messy laoweis underfoot any longer.

Also, any woman knows that what a woman most wants to see when she returns from vacation is a clean house.

Shannon calls just after they land in Dalian. They forgot to write down the code for the keypad at the outside door.

We're in the middle of a Lost episode when they arrive. They left Bangkok, Thailand, at 5:30 a.m.

We try not to keep them up but we're still talking at ten to midnight.

All the while we've been here we've looked at the snapshots covering the wall in the office and along the hallway.

There they are at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, in front of the pyramids in Egypt, on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, above the Grand Canyon, at the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City.

They've been to Rome, Paris, London, Cairo, and Hong Kong. They've visited Morocco, and Mayaysia, and now, Sri Lanka.

Shannon tells me they hadn't planned to go to Sri Lanka this trip, but their original flight was cancelled. When Damon looked at sale flights online he discovered a cheap flight to Sri Lanka.

They found it was refreshingly uncrowded, unlike Thailand, which is flooded with tourists. They were often the only foreigners in the areas they visited. They also discovered that the Sri Lankans are very friendly and welcoming and eager to have visitors now that the civil war has ended there.

Though Shannon and Damon love to travel and save their money to do so, they value experience over luxury, staying in youth hostels or with families they've contacted through a network of people who offer a spare room in their own homes.

We admire them for their courage and their curiosity about the world. When they finally return to Canada and settle down they will have a much wider knowledge of the world and greater wisdom about its people.