My Journey

The Genesis of My Journey

My journey to Peru began in my childhood. As a young girl I had yet to know that Peru would be my final destination, but I always knew deep inside that I would live abroad someday. While most kids watched Loony Tunes and drew pictures of houses, trees and their families, I was watching the Travel Channel religiously and cutting out magazine photos from National Geographic to create collages of the places I dreamed of exploring one day.

My first dabble in Spanish was when I was six years old, my mother had bought me a Berlitz course to accompany my home school studies, but it would be the German language that I studied the most from the 6^th grade until high school and beyond. Spanish was really one of the last languages I wanted to learn in those days since everyone in my hometown of Orlando, Florida spoke Spanish and to my ears it didn’t sound pretty. Learning languages had always come as a knack to me, but it would be a while before I would voluntarily concede to learning the Spanish language.

The Peruvian Connection

In my Freshman year of High School I had convinced my father to enroll me in a Taekwondo school. He was disappointed that I had decided not to continue on with my piano lessons, as I had become quite advanced, and was emphatic that Taekwondo was a phase that I was going through and would not be there forever; basically, I had no future in it. Little did the both of us know that Taekwondo would in fact be my future and the vehicle that would eventually connect me to Peru.

Flash forward 5 years and 1 black belt later when I would first cross paths with a mysterious Taekwondo athlete from Peru. He was handsome and quiet and the English that he did speak was little and broken. I found him odd yet quite interesting at the same time, and what girl isn’t attracted to a guy that can kick some butt?! Long story short it took us a year and half and two false engagements before we would cross paths again in the same school. Life is funny how it has its timing.

I began training with him during the evenings and then go out with him on the weekends to eat ice cream in Downtown Disney. It would be two weeks after becoming his official girlfriend that I would move in with him and a month later that I would become his wife. While I was living with him I had a strange thought cross my mind, “I feel like he’s my soul-mate” I thought to myself. However, I couldn’t tell him this, because then he would just think that I was crazy! Later on that very same evening he tells me in his best English possible, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I feel like you’re my soul mate.” I was left speechless!

Sí, Sí, Sí

We married without the previous knowledge or consent of either of our families and when we did tell them, they whole heartedly approved of our marriage and gave us their blessings, even though his family had never met me nor seen me and vice-versa with mine.

One thing about Peruvians that I admire and wish that more of us North Americans would adopt as custom is their close-knit relationship with their families. He would talk to his father on a daily basis and his father would always ask to speak with me, never you mind that I didn’t speak Spanish and he didn’t speak English. I had already been looking at starting my studies in the local community college which I had been putting off for years, and being that I love learning foreign languages and wanted to take a foreign language course, I opted to finally take Spanish so I could at least decently communicate with my new in-laws.

The Initial Shock and Awe

February of 2005 would mark my first visit to Peru. There are two times in your life where the world changes and becomes a whole lot bigger; 1.) The birth of your child(ren), and 2.) Your first trip to a developing country. I had no idea how much this trip would change my personal perspective and change my life. I was 7 1/2 months pregnant with my second child (my husband’s first) when I would meet my father-in-law and the rest of my husbands family in person. It had been 4 years since my husband had been back to Peru. He originally went to the United States after suffering a severe and debilitating knee injury during a competition that would have qualified him to compete under the Peruvian flag in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He may have lost an Olympic dream, but he did gain a family out of his unfortunate circumstances.

When I entered my husband’s childhood home I was shocked to see an unfinished cement floor. He had warned me on the taxi ride to Chorrillos that his family wasn’t rich, but I didn’t expect to see conditions that would be considered 3rd world poverty in my country. His father showed us up to the second floor where we would be staying. If the first floor was a shock, then the second floor would be the “awe.” The walls were exposed brick and the roof was some sort of corrugated wavy, material. Now I had struggled financially after having my first daughter from a thankfully failed relationship, and I would have even considered myself as being “poor,” but I had no clue how much materialistically I was better off than his family. Even though his family lacked much of what I took for granted in the United States, the one thing that they had an abundance of was life, love, and a sense of family. We only spent 2 weeks in Peru, but by the second day after getting over the initial surprise, I was hooked!

Realizing the South American Dream

Finally in 2007 we purchased our first home in Peru in the district of Chorrillos, just a few blocks from his father’s house. While much has changed since 2005 up until now, the one thing that hasn’t changed is my love and adoration for Peru and the Peruvian people. Now my husband is 1 year away from receiving his U.S. Citizenship and I am 1 year away from receiving my Peruvian citizenship. For now he remains in the United States and I here in Peru with our daughters, but we are little by little building our Peruvian dream and one day hope to experience and contribute to this country as a unified family unit.