Signed, Sealed, Delivered, the Story

I arrived in Lima on Saturday morning with my flight delayed thanks to a Customs issue in the USA (whatever that means!). I slept decently well on my overnight flight down there, which was a requirement because the first two days in Lima were going to be crazy because I was going to be attending her family reunion party that starts that night at 9:00pm and ends sometime around sunrise and involves large amounts of cerveza consumption!

I had a wide variety of options available for a proposal. Since we're going to visit one of the seven wonders of the world, Machu Picchu, it would pretty awesome to do it there. Or I could do it when we celebrate our 13 month's "anniversary" this week. Or I could do it AT the family reunion. Or, as I chose, I could do it in the hours before the family reunion, and I had two options there. With a lot of time between when I arrived and the party, I could do it at the beach when we were alone together, which is a little scary if you know what the beaches are like here and how crowded they are. There was also the issue of transporting it to the beach, where I could hide it, etc. Then, at the last minute, I found out that her friends were going to pick us up and take us to the beach with them, so the solidarity became an issue with that plan.

My final option that I thought of a few days ago involved the fact that her parents are very "traditional" and Erika had told me that they wanted me to ask them for permission for her to stay with me in the apartment I'm renting in Lima for the week (which is awesome, by the way). I had asked my friend Russ to translate both this request and my proposal asking them for permission to marry her, which actually occurs AFTER you ask the girl in Peru. So I thought, wouldn't it be funny if I asked for permission for her to stay with me, which Erika expected, and then continue on to ask permission for her to marry me, which she didn't expect? I liked the idea but the fact that her dad wouldn't be there because he was busy organizing the party all day and from what I'd heard about Peruvian proposals, we were supposed to all be together with a nice dinner together, champagne, celebration, etc.

So we were sitting in her living room with her mom and waiting for her friends to pick us up and somehow the subject came up about the fact that we had always called each other "novio" and "novia", which I originally thought meant girlfriend and boyfriend, but I learned later that it actually means "fiancee" :-X ! Oops. She never had a problem with me using it and she always referred to me as her "novio" too. So the three of us were talking about this and laughing a little bit about the fact that "she can't be your 'novia' because she doesn't have a ring on her finger yet, ha ha ha!" Ha ha ha, indeed. Without saying a word, I decided to strike while the iron was hot and went to my room, got out my cheat sheet with my proposal(s) and came back in to read it.

They were both touched by me asking permission about her staying with me and I left a significant pause there for that to sink in before diving into the short proposal, which said to the effect that I was very happy to be a part of the family reunion that would happen that night and I wanted to know if we could celebrate another thing as well. Bling! The only thing I remembered was Erika covering her mouth and her eyes looking huge and her shaking her head. I thought to myself "Is she saying no, not right now, it's not appropriate, this isn't how they do it in Peru"? But I was half way done and wasn't about to stop there to find out! When I finished my translation, she said she didn't understand the last line, which was when I asked for the permission. She didn't understand it until I took the ring and rock out of my sunglasses case :o)

J. Riley, the party story comes next!