The Pana Town Fair

Later that evening we headed up to check out the fair. "You want to risk the ferris wheel?" I asked, knowing what we were in for after my visit to the Sololá fair the year before. But, he'd apparently forgotten my story and we jumped on, slowly spinning as they loaded and unloaded people. We were stuck at the top for awhile, no takers coming to fill the empty seats. We hung there, swaying in the breeze, admiring the town from above, a view I'd never seen before. We tried to spot where my house would be, and looked down on the band playing live music on the stage in front of the church.

As we got back down to the bottom Cristian was ready to get off, thinking we'd done a complete rotation and the ride was over. "Oh no, it's just getting started!" I informed him as the ride finally lurched to life. We spun up into the clouds, circling vertiginously, the lightweight car swinging as it turned. Every time we reached the edge of the wheel, about to drop back down again, the seat tipped and we'd be looking down, nothing but what looked like a straight drop down before us. After a few rounds of that, it ponderously started spinning backwards, picking up speed as it went until we were being hurtled into the unknown behind us. Feeling grateful we'd decided NOT to eat before hand as it came to a stop we stumbled off, happy to be back on solid ground, but smiling from the adrenaline rush.

I'd missed it the year before, off in Finland visiting Cristian, but this year, same dates, he was visiting me. A week beforehand traffic started getting funny as vendors set up their stalls all along the roads near the church. The night before the official town holiday (the day of the patron saint of the town, in this case St. Francis), there were fireworks all evening long, and they didn't stop as we got ready for bed. At 3 o'clock in the morning I woke to hear the church bell tolling. Non-stop. For 45 minutes. I could hear a brass band playing, music floating down from the plaza. Fireworks continued to go off, and when we woke up in the morning they were still going on. Suddenly it made sense to me why Guatemalan's get the day of their town fair off. After being up setting off fireworks, playing music, and tolling church bells literally all night they'd need a day off!

The fair crept further into town, street by street, until there were vendors set up along the street I walk to work on. Some days, the child in me just can't resist, and walking back from work one day, I just couldn't resist the cotton candy. I stopped to see if they sold smaller sizes, but the vendor just shook his head no. Take it or leave it. I decided that at 60 cents it was worth it, even if Cristian and I together didn't need that much sugar, and home I went to share the biggest cotton candy ever with Cristian (it was too much even for both of us).

The Proposal

Cristian had just gotten in the night before and after a long, tiring journey, a late night, and jetlag, watching a movie together seemed like the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. So we cuddled up on the couch and he started About Time, a movie he said he thought sounded good and he had on his computer.  Fifteen minutes in or so, he turned to me and said, "Wait, this takes place in England?" Bemused, I asked him if he hadn't noticed their accents. It was a charming, sweet love story with a time travel twist and I was soon caught up in the story.  Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and a song I know started playing. 

Not just any song. I looked up at him, "Hey! It's our song!" I smiled, then kissed him, happy in the moment.  I had a tiny little suspicion that maybe he wasn't as clueless about this movie as his "This takes place in England?" remark made him seem.  "Did you know our song was in this movie?" I asked. "What do you think?" he responded.  The obvious answer was, "Yes"

"Now I have a question for you." he said.  And in the second before he continued, my stomach did a million acrobatic flips and my heart started racing.  "This is it. He's really going to ask me to marry him." I thought. "Will you marry me?" he asked, and out of nowhere, he had the ring box open in his hand. And once again, the obvious answer was "YES!". I clung to him, tears hovering at the edges of my eyes, feeling like my heart would burst with so much love and joy. He slipped the ring on my finger as the movie played on in the background, the two of us completely oblivious to it anymore.  He finally asked if I was going to look at the ring, which I'd really overlooked in the significance of the moment.  It was gorgeous.  I watched it sparkle and tried to wrap my mind around the fact that we were actually getting married. 

Eventually we came down from the clouds, got to call and tell my parents, and even eventually finished the movie.  Turned out he'd actually watched it 7 times, figuring out the timing so he'd know when to slip the ring out, unseen by me and be ready to propose.  And it worked. The tenderness of being proposed to with our song playing in the background, the element of surprise, the privacy to be delighted together afterwards-I couldn't have imagined a more perfect moment.