I started writing my thesis and had to come to terms with the fact that it was going to be okay, not perfect. At the same time, I started applying for jobs. I was going to have to figure something out since we were going to need health insurance and enough money to pay for an apartment and my car. I ended up finding a job a month later and thankfully I was pretty close to being done with my thesis. My stupid Chemistry professor was an idiot. I brought him draft after draft to critique and never received one comment from the guy. BUT when it came time to defend my thesis, he brought out all these questions. Hello, I could've included more if you would've given me some feedback. The other three people on my panel (Spanish professor, Zoology professor and the Chair of the Honor's Dept) thought it was great so he really was just being a jerk. Chemistry was one of three subjects I had to make fit into a thesis for a BIS (Bachelor of Integrated Studies) degree. My Spanish professor finally came to my aid and told him to lay off - it wasn't a Master's level Chemistry paper. It was a Bachelor's level triple subject one. Whatever...the whole thing sucked! But I made it through. I've never been more relieved to have something to cross of my to do list in my life.
I was struggling to figure out what to do. My pre-Marcos plan had been Med School. Now what? I was about to graduate in Chemistry, Zoology and Spanish. Hmm...what was I going to do? I couldn't go to graduate school yet. My future husband was still a few years away from his Bachelor's degree. I started sending resumes everywhere hoping I could figure something out. Well, I ended up getting an offer to work in a congressional office. Weird, but true. It's one of those times I just shrugged my shoulders and figured I'd let life guide me instead of trying to reason through everything. I'm usually wrong anyway. :) As soon as I found out I got the job, I had a million things to do. Marcos and I packed up my great grandma's stuff to take her to St. George where she would stay with my grandparents for awhile until they could come back to SLC. Road trip over the weekend and starting my first real grownup job on Monday. Holy crap! After that, we were both kind of nomads. Marcos was getting ready to move out - we had found an affordable apartment in the same complex where his brother and sister-in-law, Amy, lived. Now he just had to wait until the beginning of May when he could move in. I slept wherever I happened to be each night. Sometimes I was at my mom's, other times my great grandma's. It was insane!
The good news continued. Marcos' parents had decided to send their Geo Prizm so he would have a car. It was so hard to get places without a car and he had been without one for a long time. What a blessing! We knew we couldn't afford two car payments, but we needed two cars to make our schedules work. Wa-hoo!
We went to bridal fairs and all sorts of crazy things trying to figure out what we wanted. We decided a few things mattered and nothing else did. We wanted to have a fun wedding with lots of food, fun and dancing. We wanted things simple and not frilly. We wanted pictures and a video so we could remember that day forever. And we wanted to make sure we were ready to be husband and wife so we focused on our temple prep class and other spiritual things.
Marcos' aunt is an amazing seamstress and offered to make me a dress. A few of my friends came with me to get an idea of what style of dress I wanted and then we sent her some pictures and measurements. I knew I would love it and tried not to think about it after that. We were planning a lot of the wedding, but our parents were helping too. We were going to have the reception at my mom and Barney's house so I put them in charge of a lot - nothing like delegating projects to help ease the stress.
We flew to Florida in May and had a great time with Marcos' family. We had a lot to fit in, but it was still fun. We went to the beach, dancing with his sister, took engagement pictures, got fitted for my dress, and the family threw a shower for me. It was so crazy to have a shower thrown by people I didn't even know - and so generous. After our brief trip to Florida, it was time for real life again - work, school and more planning.
Marcos and I had decided to go on a cruise for our honeymoon. We purchased the plane tickets and tickets for the cruise and paid for them ahead of time. We didn't want to start out our marriage with a bunch of pointless debt. Because of my congressional job, we were able to learn a lot more about the INS process. It was the biggest pain ever! We had to file tons of paperwork, pay a lot of money and then wait and hope nothing went wrong so Marcos could get work authorization. Right now, he was only authorized to work on campus as part of his student visa. In the process, we found out that because Marcos had graduated from High School in Venezuela, gone to Texas on a missionary visa and then gone directly from Texas to Utah on a student visa - he had never left the country to have his passport renewed. He had the right paperwork to show he had a student visa, but he didn't have a stamp in his passport. If we left the country, he would need to get the passport renewed. Confusing? Yeah, we thought so too. Basically this meant that because the cruise went into Mexico, he would have to have his passport renewed in order to reenter the United States. And...we were only in Mexico a few hours so there was no way that was possible. There was a good chance they would decide not to let him back on the boat when we boarded in Mexico. Um, yeah, that sucked. We tried to get our money back, but nope. We hadn't purchased travel insurance (not that we even knew there was such a thing). Doing all this alone was tough work. We had to change our plans so we could still use the plane tickets, but now we had to find a hotel, rental car and all sorts of stuff. Oh, the plans that had to be made, changed and rearranged.
The good part of all this was we really worked well together. The stress got to us, but we didn't take it out on each other. Mainly I just cried it out every time I couldn't deal with life and then hugged him until I felt better. And it seemed to work. We tried to keep the focus on spiritual things - we would attempt to leave the plans and real world behind and go to our temple prep class together. It definitely helped us keep things in perspective. So the engagement didn't break us, but it could have if we had let it. Instead we allowed it to bring us closer together. If we could get through this, we could hopefully get through anything together.
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