Santiago, Chile

Santiago, Chile

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Here comes the novia

I have BIG news which calls for some serious updating. As you have heard or can guess by my title, Din and I are ENGAGED! Yes, amazing, I know. It happened so fast, we're so young, this could be complicated, etc. But I am really excited. And HAPPY! First thing's first, let me tell you about the proposal....

Last year when my friends came to visit I took them to this little eco-friendly surf hostel in Ritoque, about an hour north of Valparaíso. I loved the hostel and the location and I had been wanting to go back, but with Din's schedule and our lack of funds, we didn't manage until last weekend, to celebrate my 25th birthday. This was after I had hosted Thanksgiving (a week of cooking and cleaning) and I could make no excuses to stay in Santiago when a relaxing beach weekend was just a short bus ride away. So I booked the private double at Ritoque Raíces and we left on Saturday morning. On the bus ride we noticed the strange but all-to-familiar phenomenon of leaving behind sunny Santiago, not a cloud in the sky, and after descending from the Coastal Range, hitting a solid curtian of dark gray clouds that hug the coast. I want to sound like I know something about this country where I live, so I'll attribute this to the Humbolt current and the temperature differences, but really I never leave the city and have no clue why this happens. Anyway, we arrive in Quintero and picked up some groceries, and an unusual request by Din to buy champagne piqued my curiosity. But damn me for telling him that we didn't need any because I had brought wine. Oh well. 

The room was not what we were expecting. After months of me telling him how awesome this hostel was, we were both pretty disappointed when the would-be subsititute host (the owner was out of town when we arrived) showed us to a dingy room with low ceilings, an unfinished mural that looked like a child had been doodling on the walls, a strange odor wafting from our bathroom, and the BED. Oh, the bed. I don't know where this thing came from or what possessed Angie (the owner) to buy it and put it in her hostel, but it was like laying on metal coils covered by a sheet. I had to position myself all night long so that the springs were poking me in the muscles and not my spine or hips. Ugh.

So Din got a little pouty, and I wasn't in the mood to put up with that, so I told him (a little insensitively in retrospect) that if he didn't like it we could go back to Santiago, or go find a place in Valpo for the night. Unbeknownst to me, this did not fit into his plan of asking me to marry him and having a romantic night just the two of us in an isolated beach. But we went for a walk, and he cooled off, and we made the best of it. We curled up on the hostel couch and I read Wuthering Heights, and he browsed the Nat Geo collection and looked for English words he knew. As the afternoon wore on, I kept asking him when we would start making dinner. He kept telling me "not yet, let's wait another hour". Poor Din's heart was probably beating like crazy for several hours as I sat immersed in Catherine and Heathcliff. 

Finally I couldn't take it any more, so at about 8:00 I started cooking the hamburgers and toasting the marraqueta. He busied himself making votives out of cut up plastic bottles, and by 8:30 it was dark and brooding outside and we took our food, wine, and candles down to the deserted beach. We planted ourselves on a grassy patch and made our picnic, with his ipod shuffle inside a shell amplifier to set the mood. 

The grassy spot...imagine candlelight

After we finished eating (thank god I thought to rinse my hands off in the surf as they were covered in ketchup) he started saying sweet things, and reflecting on our year together and how happy he was and how much I meant to him. And then he just popped the question: Quieres casarte conmigo? 
The ring! We decided on the right hand then
Mind you, this is not the first time I've heard him utter these words, but in the past the question has been hypothetical. So this night I had to ask him what kind of question it was (meaning Are you for real???). But then, as if suddenly remembering, he reached behind his back and presented a little box. He opened it and revealed a little ring with something very shiny in the middle. I believe my response was something to the effect of  OMAIGODOMYGODOHMYOGMYGOOOOODDDDD!!!! Yes!! And after some tearful hugging and kissing, one of us remembered to put the ring on my finger, and had a moment in which we realized we didn't know which finger it would go on (still resolving this issue). So after trying to draw out that moment as long as possible, I couldn't contain it any more and I had to take the picnic back to the hostel and tell whoever was there.

The two of us in our little hostel room
By that time, Angie had returned, and I showed her the ring, and she was excited, and invited us to a glass of wine with the others who were hanging out on the porch. It was weird sharing something so personal with people I didn't know, especially since my own family didn't know yet. (There was no internet at the hostel and my phone had died, so I was incommunicado until we got back to Santiago).

So that's the story. Beautiful, romantic, and memorable, and brings a smile to my face as I recall it. 

The next chapter was less so. On Monday I started compiling all the documents needed for the fiancé visa petition. We both knew that our next step would be to apply for the visa and go to the US to get married and make a life. Luckily, I had most of the paperwork ready and just had to double check, print some things out, and get some new passport photos. I sent off the petition package on Wednesday, so hopefully by the end of December we'll know if it was accepted and we can move on to the even bigger task of the visa application.

In the meantime, we head off to Peru in about a week to spend Christmas with his family, who I will be meeting for the first time. I am nervous, but I think I'm good with parents. Of course, I don't really know what Peruvian parents, or his parents in particular, want or if it's any different than what other parents want. But I am eager to meet them and to get away from Chile for a bit, and have the romantic beach weekend we've been craving. 

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