Mi Amor

In case you hadn’t heard, I have a boyfriend.

I’ve by and large avoided talking about him, except in passing, here on this blog. But as the relationship has gotten more serious, I find I no longer care if everyone in the world knows. Besides, it’s not like I spent the first two months here neglecting my duties! Anyhow, here is the story of how we met.


On Elí:

It all started around Valentine’s day, as these things are wont to do. At the time, I was living in Ciudad Sandino with Patricia and her parents. Patricia had just bleached my hair a lovely golden color and that evening we were sitting around in the living room, chatting with her parents about the upcoming Valentine’s party that Sunday in the church where Juan de Dios, her father, is pastor. Generally, I am not a huge fan of parties of any kind, and specifically avoid ones dedicated to phony holidays such as Vday. However, I was kind of excited about this one for the excellent reason that I had been promised chocolate cake. Mmmmmmmmmm, cake.

Somehow the conversation turned to my lack of a man companion and it was declared to me that I needed one. But, I protested, I don’t really want one. And besides, I continued, even if I did, all the men my age are married with two or three kids already. There was a pause and I thought briefly that I had scored some conversational points and maybe the whole uncomfortable subject would be dropped.

If only I was even occasionally right…

Juan de Dios then announced that he was putting himself in charge of my love life and furthermore, that he had the perfect guy for me. Oh. Great.

His name, I was told, is Elí (pronounced el-EE) and he sings, plays the guitar, very handsome and is tall like a gringo (That last part was important as I utterly refuse to date anyone shorter than myself, which is rather a large percentage of the male population here). I flared my nostrils in skepticism.

Between my hair being an entirely different color and Patricia, her sister and her mom fussing over my clothing and makeup, I was really starting to feel like a maiden being prepared to sacrifice to a volcano.

In this particular case, the volcano was sitting in the back of the church and I didn’t notice him until after the service was over and the party was beginning. But the first time I saw him, I knew who he must be. Patricia confirmed what I had guessed, that it was in fact, him. She asked me if I thought he was cute. Cute? He’s the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in real life. 

It was possibly the most surreal moment of my life watching his sister-in-law cross the room, ask him if he wanted to meet me, and seeing him immediately get up, walk over, kiss my cheek and sit down in front of me. In the few moments it took all of that to happen, I managed to forget every single word of Spanish I’d ever learned. To make matters worse, I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the noise of the party. Obviously that first conversation was a dismal failure. On the other hand, the cake was fantastic!

The next Sunday, armed with another week’s worth of Spanish practice, I was determined to talk to him. I’d spent that week getting bullied by several different people about my lack of willingness to actually open my mouth and say things and I figured then was as good a time as any to make a complete ass of myself.

Blazing success! He is, above all things, a very patient person, and isn’t ever the least bit bothered by my lack of language skills. We talked for quite some time (ok, he talked and I occasionally added some grammatically awkward thoughts), exchanged phone numbers, and the rest is history.

What can I say about him that doesn’t sound like a hideous teen romance novel? I fear it’s inevitable, but here it goes anyway.

He is as advertised - handsome, tall, musically gifted. He’s polite, charming, responsible, friendly and outgoing (one of us should be, right?). He’s very smart and a great teacher of Spanish, which is good, since my Spanish needed dramatic improvement and he currently speaks no English. As you might imagine in a Latin man, he is both romantic and can dance very well. However, he has managed to avoid the machismo that is usually also prevalent in Hispanic culture. Children worship him, probably because he’s really goofy sometimes.

His father is a pastor in the north of Nicaragua; his mother died of cancer six years ago. He is the 8th of 11 children! I haven’t yet met all of his siblings, but I’m working on it. Sometimes I feel like I’m collecting them like action figures (collect all ten!).
   
There, that wasn’t too sappy was it?

I love him. I am absolutely, head over heels, crazy nuts about that man.

That is all.