After arriving home from our trip, it took us awhile to really understand the significance of what we had experienced. Seeing a different culture will change you. Seeing hurt and pain and suffering and poverty will awaken your compassion for injustices you previously had no idea existed.

We had both fallen in love with the children we had been with and we had also really gotten to know each other on a deeper level during our travels. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Casey better in a new environment. An environment where we were both out of our comfort zone a lot of the time. It was also a time for us to both see how the other person responded in times of stress and to see the other persons faith being grown.

About a week after we got back from our trip, he invited me to come visit him in Oakhurst again. How scary it is to be vulnerable with someone you are starting to like! I had stayed with him and his family for a week sometime before our Peru trip, which was amazing, but also terrifying because I wanted to make the best impression I could. On one of the nights, he took me up to Glacier Point in Yosemite where we dined on burritos and Jarritos orange soda. He waited until everyone had left that night (which was a long time!) and then under the moonlight and stars, he asked me to be his girlfriend.

When I drove home the next day, I stopped at a Barnes & Nobles and bought a small moleskin to start writing down our story as it happened. I wrote in that journal almost every day during our first year together. On the eve of first year together, I gave him the journals. I didn’t tell him this at the time but I knew I was going to marry him.

We spent the next two years having the best time dating and getting to know each other deeper. We saw each other everyday and talked about our future, our dreams, our beliefs. Falling in love is one of the greatest things I’ve experienced in my life. We wrote each other notes, went on dates, walked on the beach, and hiked to the top of peaks. We studied when we could but most of all, we learned to be with each other.

On New Year’s Eve of 2009, he took me ice skating in Curry Village in Yosemite. Half dome was right above us and there was snow everywhere. Then he took me on a snow picnic in a dreamy meadow complete with hot coffee. It was there that he got down on one knee and proposed to me. I couldn’t say yes fast enough!