Well, I made it back from Cartagena safe and sound and with lots of stories to tell. I'll start from the beginning, trying to describe the process I went through and if you guys have any questions, feel free to ask.
All of this started 1 year ago when I entertained the thought of finding someone special with the help of an agency in Colombia. As many of you have, I looked through all of the agencies websites, all of their pages, read the Gringos book, read the posts made on the boards, made notes and occasionally asked questions. I asked myself many times if this was the path I wanted to take and I always answered yes, why not. There are people out there that look down upon this method of finding a partner, look down on the men searching for a wife this way but life is too short to be concerned about what other people think. As far as I'm concerned there are good, honest people everywhere, just as there are bad and dishonest ones, meaning that your chances of finding someone in church, at a bar, at the library or at an agency are equal, you just have to be able to spot the good ones and avoid the bad ones. Of course that there are a few very big obstacles that most, if not all, of us will encounter by taking this path, such as language and cultural differences. Those of us that are serious are going to learn spanish, learn about Colombia, it's history, people and culture. I knew what I wanted, I was looking for a woman close to my age, trying to keep the age difference to a maximum of 10 years with all of the qualities that I want in a life long partner. At first I was skeptical, I had read many posts about the scams, rip-offs and deception on the part of the women and agencies. This helped me eliminate many of the agencies I had considered and left me with a handful in different cities. I then considered whether I wanted to be a member of an agency, do a tour, goto a Bed and Breakfast type or obtain addresses and start writing letters, I chose to write letters. So now came the decision of who to write to, should I write to everyone in every city that sparked an interest, I told myself no. I decided to choose a city that I knew I was willing to visit. It would have been unfair to the ladies to start a friendship when I knew that I would not visit that city, meaning that I didn't choose women from Cali, Medellin and Bogota because of the danger happening there. I know there are men here who have visited these cities and haven't had any problems, but I wasn't willing to take the risk, a personal decision. I knew that if I ever found and married a Colombiana, I would need to make more trips before, during and after our marriage, to visit her and her family. I know that marrying a Colombian woman would mean visiting her family once or twice a year forever, so I wanted to look for someone in a city that I wouldn't be afraid to visit often. I'm aware of the differences people have posted about their opinions on women from these cities, differences in maturity, education, beauty etc, but I knew that if I found someone special I would need to visit her in her city, this is why I narrowed my choices down to Cartagena and Barranquilla.
I chose to look through the pages of I Love Latins/Barranquilla Beauties(ILL/BB), A Foreign Affair(AFA), Latin Destination (LD) and Amigos.com ( a free service that allows you to post a picture of yourself with a profile of who you are and what you're looking for. You can also browse through the listings of different women from different countries. More on Amigos.com later) I ordered a promotional video from ILL/BB, describing the tours they had to offer, I wasn't interested. This might be the right path for some but not for me, I would feel way too overwhelmed trying to meet someone out of a group of hundreds. So I looked through the webpages of LLM/BB, LD, AFA and jotted down the names, code numbers and pages of the women I found attractive. As we all know, this is basically how we go about choosing because the information about the women is very limited. There's info about age, height, weight, with or without children, etc. but very little about their personality. I would even go so far as to say that many of the things posted about their likes, dislikes and personality seems to show up everywhere, kind of like a rubber stamp. What I'm trying to say is that when the words that are supposed to describe the women are almost identical, looks between them seem to play a bigger role. In all I ordered 15 addresses. Out of those, 13 were very, very attractive and there were 2 that were just physically stunning to me (maybe not to others but we all have our own taste), I mean the kind I dream about. One was in Barranquilla and the other in Cartagena. Something I should mention is that out of these two, the girl from Barranquilla had a very simple, almost sparse description about herself while the girl from Cartagena had a very specific, very detailed description as to who she was and what she wanted in a man, something about how she worded it caught my interest, so right off the bat I was leaning towards the girl from Cartagena.
Well, each agency sent me the postal addresses by email and it turns out that my two dream girls had email addresses also, they were the only ones out of the 15 to have emails sent to me by the agencies. So now I'm thinking, cool, I won't have to wait weeks, if I'm lucky I can write and start having a friendly relationship right away. I sent them an email introducing myself along with a picture and crossed my fingers. In the meantime, I also sent letters and pictures to the other women through the postal service. Out of the 15 sent, I got responses from 5(4 from cartagena and one from barranquilla) and one of those was from my dreamgirl in Cartagena! In the letters I sent out, I included my email address, so I was getting emails from 5 women.
CAUTION. When writing to many people, develop a method of keeping track of who is who because it is easy to get confused and get things mixed up. Things like how many people there are in their family, their names, their likes and dislikes, etc. What I did is I made a folder for each and put everything in the proper folder for reference in case I forgot a few details.
Ok, so now the process of getting to know each other started. From the 5 that responded, one girl(from cartagena) I lost interest in right away because she didn't seem serious about this, it was almost like a joke to her. She wrote about how many guys had written to her, how she joined because a friend of hers did, not because she wanted to and it seemed like she wasn't really into this, I stopped writing to her.
The second girl(also from cartagena) stopped writing to me after I sent her some full body (clothed)pictures of myself (LOL), for whatever reason I think she was looking for someone else, she didn't give me a reason, just stopped writing, but I'm glad because I knew from her questions that she was looking for someone that was physically different, taller, thinner, better looking, it's ok, she's entitled too just like we are.
The third girl(also from Cartagena) was very interested, even after I sent her the full body shots : ) But eventually I found out that she was of a different religion, she's Mormon and I'm Catholic. To make matters more difficult, she's very religious and I'm not and I felt that religion is something too important to take lightly, I told her that we could remain friends but that I felt I wasn't the right guy for her. She understood and we still email each other to see how things are going in our lives, she's a good one.
That leaves two from the agencies, but before I go into this much further, I want to briefly talk about Amigos.com. I posted my picture and info and got many emails from women in Colombia and other Latin American countries. My opinion of Amigos is that there are some girls that are posted(with pics)that are legit but for the most part the girls posted are too hot to be real. I think the pictures are fake, taken from magazines to get guys to pay for the service of being allowed to search and write to as many girls as you want. If you don't pay, you're limited to seaching for 5-6 girls each day and writing to one. Anyway, one girl from Cali saw my picture and wrote to me. She was visiting NYC (I'm in NJ) and so we decided to meet. She was very nice, attractive (Shakira type) but had just gotten out of a long term relationship and was looking for friends and nothing more. Furthermore, she didn't like it here much and was planning on going back to Cali, where she is now. I'm glad I met her for a few reasons, it showed me that not every Colombian girl is looking for a visa or a free ride, she was intelligent, educated and independent and she was a good friend. She helped me with my Spanish in person and over the phone. This proved to be invaluable because she helped me get over the fear I had of speaking Spanish over the phone, of being understood, of not making a fool out of myself, she gave me a lot of confidence which help me months later when I eventually called the 2 remaining women in Colombia.
Ok, back to the remaining 2 women, one from Barranquilla(BG) and the other from Cartagena(CG). In case you're all confused, only one of my two dreamgirls responded, the one from Cartagena(CG), the other from barranquilla did not, but another girl from barranquilla(BG) did respond, one that I earlier described as very very attractive.
Ok, so now I'm writing to two women, both very nice and very interested in me. My friend BG didn't actually write to me until a few months after I had started with my girl CG, so I had a few months head start with CG. I could go on about everything CG and I wrote about, but that would take a while. CG has shown me that not only is she beautiful on the surface but beneath all the physical beauty lies an extraordinary woman who is intelligent, communicative, honest, funny, caring with a heart full of love for herself and her family. BG didn't have a chance. She a nice person but CG is much more beautiful in every way. Well, after 4 months of writing I got the courage to call herI was very nervous but after our initial hellos, we spoke and spoke, 3-4 hours at a time, about everything. I'd call her once, sometimes twice a week, even speaking to her mother and grandmother. Her mother and grandmother were the only ones that knew how we met because she told me that her father would not have approved. Well, her grandmother(father's mother)wanted to help, so she had a talk with him, trying to lessen the blow because she knew that I was going to visit and she wanted to prepare him. It turns out that he didn't get upset and when I showed up at their house for dinner, he was very nice to me, more about that later on my next post….the good stuff.
steve
