After over eleven months, my wife received her immigrant visa today. She’ll be here next Monday and I’ll be posting less frequently. I feel I have a lot of compatriots on this board. I have enjoyed reading and reflecting on your experiences over the last year. I have also profited from Ray and Gary’s visa advise. Hopefully my comments have added to some of your experiences also. I will close with two final lengthy posts to be followed by monthly updates on how we are doing. This one is specifically on my five-year quest and the next one will be about my wife and how I am preparing for her arrival.
My quest began in late 1999. I had ended a bad relationship in January and I had spend a year learning that US women were not where I wanted to be. I specifically chose Costa Rica because I had dated a Tica during college and visited her in CR the following Xmas (1969-70). So exactly 30, years later I flew south.
The “agency” I chose could have been named “For gringos without brains” but I don’t think thet was the actual name. It was a man who came to my hotel with a book of pictures. I got three introductions for $400, met the ladies with him at a restaurant and we dined together. Probably all three of them would have eaten with me again but I chose a novia. I returned in August (2000)and she still didn’t want to kiss me so I decided to party.
Clearly, I had to do something different and I decided on Colombia. I had met one lady (a Caleńa) on Yahoo and was using the “Two Gringos” books to select an agency. Since I already knew someone in Cali, I choose that city and went with the old Latin Love, in the Crystal Palace. I talked to the owner, Bud, who lived in the US, several times and felt they would treat me well. I went, met about ten ladies and settled on the lady I had met on Yahoo. I should say I chose her.
The only thing I really knew was that she wanted to leave Colombia. She’d been to the US for a month and decided to leave because she couldn’t earn a living as an illegal immigrant. She had a tourist visa and we got engaged. She visited me in March. Actually I thought she planned to stay until her K1 visa came. After three weeks, she told me that if I’d pay her debts in Colombia ($2000) she could stay with me forever and not need to return. This was not a red flag. All these relationships cost money.
Three days after I wired the money, she received a call from her sister saying she needed to return to Colombia. This was the RED FLAG which I ignored. She had lied to me and whatever excuses she made, I was an idiot to accept them as justifications for her having lied. If a woman lies about reasons for you to give her money there are no mitigating circumstances.
She returned to the US from mid-June to early August and then we returned to Colombia to get the kids and her visas. I met the children for the first time. I later learned that although she had not had shared a bedroom with her husband for twelve years (he also lived in her mother’s house with her and the children) she told her 16 year old daughter about the divorce and me at the same time. Up until this time, the daughter had felt that her mother and father had a normal relationship (separate bedrooms) and suddenly I was the cause of their divorce.
We were married the day before 911 and our final day in court was 9-12-02. It took me three months to realize she expected everything to be her way and wouldn’t compromise on anything and I spent the first nine month of 2002 to divorcing her. It cost about $20,000 in all and could never have worked. I wrote this off to my stupidity and haste and tried to move on.
In July, 2002 I took a vacation to Costa Rica. Two days before the four of us met, wife, me and both lawyers and my wife declared war by refusing a generous settlement (in November she got nothing so she got overly greedy and it cost her). In CR, I partied, hardly slept due to my depression over the upcoming “war” and found out that I would have no trouble working as an English teacher in Costa Rica.
I am a teacher so I requested a leave of absence (allowing me to return at no loss of salary) for the 2003-2004 school year and spent most of the 2002-2003 school year planning for my year in Costa Rica. I sold my house and gave away most of my furniture and in June 2003, I moved, with my two dogs, to CR.
In Costa Rica I met women through classified ads in the Tico Times, an English language newspaper sold in CR, and an agency which had two parties a month and was very helpful (Spanish Eyes). I also dated a few of the more innocent professionals (es decir putas) I met in my partying. I finally bumped into my wife when I ducked into the store she worked in during a rainstorm.
I’ll try to post about my wife and what I think I did right in a few days. I’ll also talk about what I expect to happen to prepare her and then maybe every month, I’ll give an update.
Again, I appreciate the camaraderie, hearing your experiences and the good advise you all have given me during this past year. I hope you can learn from my mistakes but probably not. We learn much better from our own mistakes (however painful) than we do from our own. And if the motivating force in our lives is only fear, we will accomplish nothing. My admonition is to be careful but there is much to gain. Latinas are worth the effort if you find the right one. I’ll try to tell you what I think I did right this time and how I am prepared for her visit.
