SO!! Guess where I am writing from. Woodinville, Washington, the happiest place on earth! I have to live through three weeks at mom's house, and then I'm off again, this time to Wyoming to work for the summer. At the moment I am rather pissed. I went off this morning to do some stuff (Jesus CHRIST you spend money fast back in the US) and while I was gone my mom left the house too, and she set her house alarm while neglecting to tell me how to disarm it. So now every time I try to enter the house this blood curdling squeal goes off. Welcome back to the US! Where people live in fear! I don't know when she's getting back, and I couldn't go inside, so I fled to the library. My mom doesn't even need a house alarm. Nobody's going to break into her goddamn house to steal her Miss Piggy paraphernalia, or her "Jesus is in my heart" cross stitched nick nacks either. Grrr!!
Anyway, I will try to let that go. So I'm back at home! Am I happy about it? Not really. Although I am looking forward to my new job. It is going to rock. But a lot of things have happened in the past few weeks....
Where do I begin. I think I left off with chapter 127 of The Adventures of Chloe Bowen, where Chloe goes off for a weekend by herself to Cajamarca, Peru, only to discover a 4' 11" Peruvian male who is more than happy to show her around, as long as she dangles the potential, even slightest potential, of getting to see her boobs. Well as you recall from the last page of that chapter, Chloe ended up returning home without showing her boobs to anyone, but still having a good time.
Chapter 128 begins the next week, when Chloe goes on The Great American Weekend with her friend April to Chimbote, a town south of Trujillo, famed for the strong smell of fish which permeates the town. The two of us realized we hadn't really hung out with any US'ers in a good long while, so we planned to do all things American -- talk American, eat American, reminisce about things we missed about America. More or less we did this and realized that the things we missed most were good pizza and Napoleon Dynamite.
The reason we had gone to this town in particular was, well, not any real good reason. It's not a super-touristy or interesting place, but we sort of wanted to get out of Huanchaco, and Chimbote isn't very far away. There was supposedly an island you could hire a fisherman to take you out to where you could walk and play with the birds. This island was called La Isla Blanca because it is covered in guano. An interesting effect. Anyway we got to the town, found a crappy cheap hotel, and were setting off to attempt to find the island, when I happened to run into an aquaintance of mine from Huanchaco on the street. It IS a small world. He's one of the artisans who sells their crafts to the tourists. He's really good actually. AND not creepy. So he helped April and I out a lot in finding and getting to the island. The next day April and I hung out with the locals at the pool, and then toddled on back to Huanchaco.
That was my last weekend in Huanchaco. After that I had to get my ass in gear to get ready to leave. This was hindered, however, by the fact that I had had a cold for about two weeks which just wouldn't go away. It kept getting worse and worse. Cesar kept telling me, "You should go to the doctor!" which of course made me LESS likely to go, but eventually I did, and it turned out I had sinusitis. So for the past two weeks I've been on antibiotics, only now I've run out, and in all honesty, I'm not sure I'm totally better. I might need more antibiotics. But I don't want to go to the doctor HERE because it costs like $1,000.
Anyway, this did not make leaving Huanchaco any easier. I had invited Cesar to come with me on my voyage up the coast of Ecuador, but I still wasn't sure if he was going to come. And in all honesty I wasn't sure if I WANTED him to come. No, I wanted him to come, but I wasn't totally sure how it was going to be..if we would get along, or if we would argue, or what would happen. And since I didn't know for sure even if he was coming, I wasn't banking on it.
Well, turns out, he did come with me. And it was fabulous, it was wonderful, it was better than I could have hoped...Let me explain.
So we left Trujillo on an overnight bus to Tumbes, a sketchy ASS border town in Peru. We got to Tumbes early in the morning, and I thought having Cesar with me would be a help fending off the leeches there that try to rob and cheat and steal from the tourists, but I was wrong. Cesar might be a brown male, but he's not a very experienced traveller. Luckily, however, I was more worldly wise than he was and had crossed the border once before, so I was able to determine when somebody was trying to SCREW us and blow them off. So we got through no problem and directly caught another bus to Guayaquil.
Remember, I had sinusitis. My head had hurt the entire bus ride to Tumbes, and by the time we were on our way to Guayaquil it was like 800 degrees outside and we had been in the bus for 19 hours. I developed a migrane headache. It hurt so bad, I was crying. FINALLY we get to Guayaquil and find some stupid hotel, but my head hurt all day, and all day the next day. We ended up having to spend an extra day in Guayaquil.
Finally, however, we were on our way up the coast. Our first stop was Montanita, this super-touristy beach town. It was okay, but really touristy. Also, FYI: there is a good reason they warn you about going in the sun when you are on antibiotics. I went out sunbathing a few hours after taking my pill thinking to myself, "HA..drug warnings are for pussies..what's the worst that could happen?" Well, I'll tell you. I broke out in a horrible itchy, bumpy rash all over my ENTIRE BODY. So THAT'S why the warnings there..huh. Luckily though it only lasted like a day and then it was gone. From then on I was more careful.
The next day we went to this adorable little place on the coast called Puerto Lopez, with a lovely warm water sandy beach and really nice people. We ended up going out on a boat with some folks who then invited us over for dinner. It was Cesar's first time on a boat, so he was really excited. Cesar loved the whole thing actually, which made me happy. We spent a few days in Puetro Lopez and then headed up the coast to another town, Canoa, with even WARMER water and a bigger sandy beach. It was fabulous. After that we had to face going to Quito and another horrifyingly hot bus ride, but we made it. The next day I flew off to Seattle and Cesar toddled off back to Huanchaco all by himself. I was terrifyingly worried about him until he emailed me to say he was okay. I felt responsible for him, after all. I'm the one with the travelling experience, not him. This was basically the first time he'd left Peru, and the first time he'd been away from his family, and the first time he'd spent an extended period of time with a girl.
So you are probably wondering was so great about the trip. Besides the obvious warm sandy beaches, hot sex and general fabulousness. Well. Something weird happened between Cesar and me, and I think we fell in love a little bit. I feel ridiculous saying that, but it's true. I feel embarrassed to say that, like it is so far fetched but..why not, really?
Dejame explicar. So for the past bit over a month Cesar and I had been hanging out a lot, basically every day except when I left for the weekend. So I did see a good deal of him. And I liked him a lot, but I didn't feel that close to him, because he was always holding back. And I didn't share that much with him either, since it didn't seem like that's the sort of thing that he wanted. So when he did little things that bugged me, I didn't say anything because we weren't in a serious relationship anyway, so I should just let it go, right? Lesson learned from the Jorge Experience. But somehow, when we went travelling together, things started to change.
I started to realize that he really did care about me. He was so super-nice and attentive and caring when I was sick. He started sharing things with me, about himself, about our relationship, I started telling him all sorts of things about me, my neurosis (of which I have many), my past, my future. It was a very emotional week and we both cried multiple times, sometimes because we were talking about something in our past, sometimes because of my impending departure, and sometimes because I had a freaking migrane!! But it was like, woa, what is going on here? I did not expect this to happen. I expected to just leave and have that be that, but I come to find out the boy LOVES me. He really does. And I think I love him too.
Course, I'm second guessing everything. How do I know he's sinceeeere? How do I know the feelings won't change? And well, I don't. And I'm trying REALLY HARD to be okay with that right now, but any of you that know me at all, know that it's practically impossible (no, it's impossible) for me not to over-analyze things. On the outside this whole situation seems so ridiculous to me. But then I think, people do it every day. I have multiple friends who are married to foreigners. But I barely KNOW the guy. I think I've had my heart crapped on so much before it's especially hard for me to trust that something good is actually happening. And I'm still not sure. I don't know if I'll ever be. But I'm just taking it one day at a time. We'll see what happens when I'm in Wyoming. We'll email a lot, talk on the phone a lot, see how it goes. If he really wants to be with me, he has a lot of work to do. He has to start studying English more seriously for one, and for the other he has to stop smoking so much pot! Both of these things he has already started to do though, so we'll see if he continues. That is how he'll show me that he's sincere. If we keep in good contact the whole summer and nothing changes, odds are come next November I'll head back down there to visit him, to see how things really are. We shall see. Besides how rad would it be to be married to a Cesar?
Will Chloe marry the exotic foreigner? Will she move into an apartment with her new husband, get a dog and a cat, and start having little brown babies? Stay tuned to find out...
