How I Got Here
Posted on June 6, 2007 - Filed Under Personal | Leave a Comment
Well, this is my new personal blog. I had to start it because there were so many things I wanted to blog about that just didn’t fit into the theme of my other two blogs, At Home Mom and Last Minute Cook. So, here we are with a brand new blog!
To start things off, I figured I would tell you a bit about myself. I grew up in Canada, the eldest of four sisters. We were not raised conventionally, let me tell you! Our parents were hippies and we grew up in an assortment of homes including tents, a goat shed, and a 100 year old house that later burnt to the ground. Oh, and we didn’t go to school, we were home schooled right from the start.
Anyway, all that is ancient history! 
I grew up, moved out and in 2002, decided to go travelling for a year or two. The idea was to go to Egypt, but with all the military activity so close, I decided that Brazil was a better bet. Well, the plane tickets were pretty expensive, so I figured I would stay a while and see the rest of South America. Then I got the bright idea to take buses down and see Central America, too! What had started out as a short trip quickly turned into a five year travel plan.
Needless to say, my parents weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of their non-Spanish speaking daughter jaunting off to third world countries on her own, but I was kind of stubborn in my youth, so off I went. It was a very interesting trip and you will probably hear more about it on this blog in the future!
I made it through the US and Mexico and ended up in Guatemala where I was robbed twice in the same day (the day I arrived), couldn’t cash any traveller’s checks and was lonely and tired and rather frightened by the time I reached Antigua, the tourist capital of Guatemala. It was time to learn some Spanish!
Signing up with a Spanish school went well, but I was running out of money, so I started teaching English in a little school in the mornings and studying in the afternoons. But my Spanish teacher decided I was “too stupid” to learn the language, and I dropped out of school and went and learned the language by sitting in the park and talking to the locals. While I did manage to learn this way, unfortunately most of my Spanish was street level! Lots of slang.
Well, to make a long story short, I started volunteering at the Obras Sociales Hermano Pedro, working with disabled children who lived in the hospital and while working there one day, I happened to catch sight of a very cute Guatemalan guy who was also volunteering. After snooping around a bit and asking nurses and other volunteers about him, I learned that his name was Carlos, he was a teacher and since the teachers were on strike, he was here volunteering. Swoon!
I tried a few times to talk to Carlos, but he wanted NOTHING to do with me! He had been engaged to get married and the girl had dumped him for someone else. Although this had happened a couple of years earlier, he was still pretty gunshy and a foreigner is usually bad news because they never stick around. So it wasn’t until I accidentally bumped into him at a night club about a month later that he finally talked to me (the fact that he was drunk helped!) and the rest is history. We settled down together, moved into an ancient adobe hut and started a life together.
At first, Carlos (who really goes by Irving), was very eager to start a family and I was most definitely not. But when I found out we were pregnant, everything was great! Until I miscarried. We lost three babies in total before a doctor finally diagnosed me with a chronic kidney infection. No sooner was that cured than I was pregnant with my son, Dorian, who was very quickly (17 months later) followed by Dante.
Now we are building our own house, very happy with our two little boys (Dorian is 18 months, Dante is 1 month), and making things work. I haven’t been back to Canada yet because I just haven’t had the money to do so. Plus, with being pregnant all the time, I wasn’t really up to getting out of the country.
Ok, that’s a brief resume of my life history, if you have any comments, questions or whatnot, feel free to add them in the comments section!
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