How We Met

We're often asked how we met.


Here's the quick version.

Girl goes to Bolivia with Habitat for Humanity.
Cute guy gives girl Tour.
Girl falls in love with Tour Guide.
Girl moves to Bolivia and marries Cute Tour Guide.

Want the longer version?  Here it is.

The background info you need to know is that my mom died unexpectedly the year before I went to Bolivia.  She was my best friend...I was an only child and hadn't talked to my dad much in many years... so it was a great shock to me.

Grief turned into Fearlessness.

Up watching late night TV one evening, a young actress was talking to Letterman about her recent trip to Costa Rica with Habitat for Humanity.  That was all I heard, and I couldn't get there soon enough.

Costa Rica, of course, was my first choice.  Tropical beaches with colorful birds flying around was all I could picture in my head.

Then I read the description. Accommodations would be in grass huts with dirt floors.  Then, all I could imagine were giant mosquitos and tarantulas crawling on me at night.  I'm not sure there are even tarantulas in Costa Rica, but you couldn't convince me otherwise.

So I checked out the Bolivia trip.  Groups would stay in a small hotel.  Small hotel beats dirt floor this time around.

I signed up.

My nerves and senses came back as a friend was driving me up the highway to the airport.  Butterflies were fluttering in my stomach, and I suddenly didn't want to go.  She reassured me, telling me it was only two weeks, and I'd be fine.  The image that came to mind was of me holding my breath underwater...I figured I could do it for two weeks and reluctantly boarded the plane.

We were a group of strangers.  There was a mother/daughter team, and a husband/wife team, but for the most part, no one knew anybody.  We arrived in a whirlwind...airport was bustling, customs was chaotic, my head was spinning from the altitude.  Our guide arrived from the hotel to drive us through some breathtaking views of La Paz, a city built in the crater of a mountain chain.  I was in awe of the world.

Our group quickly became friends as we experienced food, culture, poverty, hope, happiness and sickness together.  One by one, we dropped with stomach viruses, and I think it was my turn, when I first noticed him.  Our tour guide was always smiling and polite...I enjoyed trying to decipher his broken English, and of course, his dark eyes and tanned skin easily drew me in.

It was his job to show us an amazing time, and he did it well.  We danced in street parades, explored the Valley of the Moon, drove through the jungle, and sat under a once in a lifetime fireworks display near Lake Titicaca.  It was all so new and thrilling, how could I not fall in love?

Once again, I was reluctantly boarding a plane, this time bound for home, not sure how I would get over this new loss....long distance love.

We kept in touch through email until Christmas.  Back then, I didn't have a computer so I spent many evening hours at the library.  I'd write, then refresh my browser over and over to see if he'd written back.  There was no instant messaging at the library.  I was often the last one out, and the librarian would come over and tell me I had to leave.

At Christmas, Juan Pablo came to visit me.  It was a huge ordeal for him to get a visa to come to the US.  I think he tried three times before it was approved.  He stayed for a month.  And one night, the subject came up, and we decided to get married.  There was no storybook proposal, just love that didn't want to go the distance anymore.

The next six months involved me packing, selling, shipping boxes, renting out my place and still heading to the library every night.  Long distance phone calls were way too expensive... I learned the hard way when I paid $100 one month for one phone call!



The rest is really quite a blur.  We got married in a small ceremony on the open roof of the same hotel I had first stayed at in La Paz.  I was glad to hand over all planning to my mother-in-law.  We had a seamstress design and sew my dress, put together from images in magazines, and it was perfect.  Not a white dress, because we had a civil ceremony.  We always had plans to go back and have a fairytale wedding in a church, but we were overjoyed to find out I was pregnant with Isabela just a couple of months later, so we got busy with living life and never looked back.

So that's the story.  This year, 2012, we'll have been married ten years. Wow! Life is fun. And it sure is an adventure.