Contenta con la Vida: Our Love Story, Part III

In Part I you learned how we met, in Part II how we became friends, and now in Part III you'll get to hear how I bared my soul to Andres.

After a great night with friends, Andrés and completos, I saw him again two days later for our futbol taller (soccer workshop). About four chilenos came to play with us and make the teams more even and then about 10 more came two watch and make me feel nervous. When I saw Andrés was there talking with his friends I knew I wanted to go start a conversation with him but a) I didn't know what to say to him in Spanish and b) even English I didn't know what to say to him! So I ended up saying "Hola, como estas?" and that was it. We played on different teams and I halfway collided with him once, but that wasn't on purpose but rather due to my terrible futbol skills.

Now we get to more of the good part. On Friday school went super late (to about 8pm when it was supposed to end by 5pm) and the plans I had then had to be cancelled. That ended up with me walking home with John and John mentioned that he was going out with Andrés and some of his friends and he asked me if I wanted to join them. Of course I did! So I continued on home, had dinner with my host mom and got ready to go out. Andrés and the others came to pick me up in the truck at about 11pm and as I hopped in it was pretty full and there was a couple of people I didn't know. John quickly introduced me to Daniela, Andrés' sister, who I had seen before but not been introduced. And then he introduced me to Carol, whom he said was Andrés' girlfriend! It was a little heart-crushing. And even though it hurt a little bit, I thought to myself "this is good, now I can just concentrate on the my Spanish and mission work." Now, when John said this though, he had a smile so I thought maybe he was joking. So during the night I would glance at them sometimes to see if they were actually boyfriend and girlfriend. Conclusion: Undecided. They sat pretty close next to each other, but we all did, and I never saw them hold hands or anything. That Friday night we first joined about 5 other gringos at bar for beer and conversation and later we split off from them and went dancing for an hour or two.

Next comes Saturday. On Saturday I spent the day with my friend Jared's host family (they were so welcoming and fun!) and I enjoyed myself, but to be honest I was thinking about later that night when we had all made plans to go out again. It was finally night time and about 12 of us headed to Valparaiso (a city about 45 minutes away) to go dancing. Except we accidentally left two girls behind! Uh-oh. By the time they caught up with us they weren't in the mood to go dancing anymore so they went back and the remaining ten of us couldn't come to a consensus on what club to go to. So we ended up splitting into two groups and when I was asked which group I wanted to go with I (of course) said I wanted to stay with Andrés' group which consisted of: John, Andrés, his sister Daniela, our friend Daniella, and Carol, his supposed girlfriend. Except by this time I was pretty sure they were not dating. We ended up going to my favorite club called La Locomotora and I had such a good time. The night before we had danced mostly in a group but this night, while we stayed close to each other, we were kind of paired off. So guess who danced with me all night? That's right- Andrés! It was after this night that my heart was pretty much his.

Sunday came I didn't see Andrés this day. But something had happened to me. I constantly had butterflies in my stomach, I couldn't sleep very well and I didn't have much of an appetite. I've never had my body act in such a way before! Oh, being in love. These physical manifestations just deepened throughout the week. On Monday Andrés came to La Escuela after classes and ended up helping me for four hours on a project. Four hours! Just out of the kindness of his heart. On Tuesday I was invited to go to the movies (Transformers II!) with Andrés, his brother Michael, John, Daniela and Daniella. So up to this point I had seen him almost everyday for the past week, and I knew that I liked him a lot but I did not know how he felt about me. On the one hand, he gave me no signs. On the other, he was spending a lot of time with me! I mean, he had danced with me for a whole night and then had helped me one-on-one with my project.

And this brings us to Wednesday, which was a very important day for us. Starting Sunday I had been praying hardcore. In my mind and heart I was talking to God asking what I should do about this situation with Andrés. You see, I wasn't sure how he felt about me, I wanted him to make a move and I am of the persuasion that the man should do the pursuing so if he didn't make a move what should I do? I realized that it was July 22nd and we had only two weeks left. So I asked myself: If I left without saying or doing anything would I regret it? If I said something and it didn't turn out in a positive light would I be embarrassed enough to regret it the last two weeks in Chile? The answers respectively were yes and no- and so I decided to tell Andrés how I felt about him. He was worth the risk.

Wednesday was to be the day I talked to him, but it wasn't so easy getting him alone. On Tuesday I had asked him if he would mind taking me on a tour around Concon since I hadn't had a ton of opportunity to explore the city I was living in. He said yes... but then invited others with! We were to go after school Wednesday in between classes and a folkloric dancing taller. Unfortunately I had to cancel because we had to do something for La Escuela instead. I was bummed because I had worked myself up into telling him and then I wasn't even going to see him. But it turns out he had been asked to come to the taller because we were short on men for dancing partners. The one dance we had together that night was the Cueca, Chile's national dance. I sucked at it! It was interesting making a fool of myself in front of him with his national dance yet I had fun with it. After the taller, even though it was already 10:30pm, Andrés asked me if I still wanted to go on my tour- he would take me driving. I said "yes!" and thought this was my opportunity but then again he invited John to go. John said no because I had asked his advice earlier in the day about this whole situation. While I got my stuff together I guess Andrés kept asking John to go and finally John told him that I wanted some alone time to talk to him. So John was out of the picture but then another friend, Laura, stepped in. She heard us talking and said she wanted to go too! Again, my alone time with Andrés was shot down.

Andrés took us on our tour and it was interesting but I wasn't very into it by that point. I had let Laura sit in the front seat because I had pretty much given up. While I sat in the backseat I think I only said a couple of words the whole time and I was praying saying, "Lord, if you want this to happen, it's up to You. If he drops Laura off first, I'll tell him. But if he drops me off first I'm not going to tell him ever." Well, God worked his little miracle and Andrés dropped Laura off first. As soon as I had climbed into the front seat and shut the door he turned to me and said "So John says you have something to tell me." I was shocked! And I knew that this was it. I told him first that I really grateful for all the times he had helped me (Colmo, school project, dancing) and that I was thankful to God for having met him and his friendship- then I told him that I liked him first in Spanish and then in English so that he would know that I knew what I was saying.

Now it was his turn to be surprised! I mean, who wouldn't be surprised when someone says something like this to them, but it was a double shock because when John had told him I wanted to talk with him he had assumed I was angry with him- but it was exactly the opposite! We ended up talking for about an hour and he started off by saying how great (and full of surprises) I was but he never said how he felt about me. I was wondering, is this the gentle let down or is he saying this because he feels the same? Well by the end we had worked out that we wanted to keep getting to know each other and we'd take it from there. I was content with that and happy that he hadn't laughed in my face. I went home that night in a good mood and yet I still couldn't sleep! My goodness.

Coming up in the fourth and possibly final post find out how we went from "I like you" to dating!