... in response to Re: Re: Re: Re: What Kind of wife are th..., posted by OkieMan on Mar 25, 2005Hi OkieMan,
To address your questions about Spain, I went there to study Spanish and translation, and the church was quadrangular (Foursquare).
I came to Brazil to study Portuguese because I was interested in becoming a translator SP-EN and PT-EN. I lost interest in translation for various reasons, and decided instead to open a burrito and wrap fast-food restaurant here.
As Michael Leboeuf writes, no matter how lucky you are and how well things go at first, the gods will test you in your new venture. When this inevitably happened to me, I found myself thinking over why I'm here, and some things have changed and caused me to reconsider.
I came here, of course, because of the Latina bug. I decided to stay partly because of this great business opportunity, the beautiful women and partly because this area is beautiful, an island with 42 beaches. I also didn't see much to go home to in terms of job opportunities.
Last week I found myself bedridden by back pain and unable to manage my business, and I began to contemplate whether this is really where I want to be. While there are loads of gorgeous women here, there hasn't been much overlap between the group of women who are interested in me and the group of women I'm interested in. I've had a few girlfriends here, and plenty of women interested, but no thunderbolt. Honestly, I tend to prefer the truly-Latina look of colombianas, and you saw in my above post my general impression of them vs. brasileiras.
I had long suspected that Gringos were getting a much warmer welcome in Colombia than here, from trip reports on P-L and elsewhere. A couple of months ago a member of another list who has traveled to Colombia several times was in town and I got together with him and a friend of his, who also has been to Colombia. They kept marveling about how many gorgeous women there are around here, but also remarked, "They sure don't seem very interested in Gringos, though." They had been out to the beach where the most babes hang out, and had met and conversed with a few, but didn't detect much interest at all-- just a polite tolerance, as they described it. I also remembered Pete telling me that if I were in Cali they'd be breaking my door down.
The other new information I've been adjusting to is a sweet job offer that is available if I were to return to the States. It's work that I've done before and enjoyed immensely, and I have another idea for something I could do on the side to earn long-term residual income. So while the kind of adversity I'm up against would be superable if I were single-minded and convinced that this was THE place to be for great women and this were the only real financial opportunity available to me, I'm not really convinced of that anymore; and after five years abroad I'm a little homesick as well. Although this area is Paradise overall, it would be so nice to go drive on an interstate without worrying about running over a bicyclist or a trash-recycler's horse cart, not to see a favela anywhere, and not to see bars on windows everywhere. It would be so nice to enjoy Seattle's Korean, Thai, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, and Mexican restaurants again, and to have a decent craft beer. Longing for the leeks and garlics of Egypt here... :-)
As far as long-term plans for meeting someone, if the job and side venture go right I wouldn't have much trouble taking off for a month or more at a time to travel in the off-season, and since I speak both major languages of Latin America, through the miracle of the Internet I could use a take-it-slow approach to meeting one in virtually any country. Since I'm looking for a certain something that is kind of rare and hard to ferret out, this makes a great deal of sense to me; I can find out through communication in advance if we're on the same wavelength and I can come to know if it's worth going to Peru or Colombia or wherever to meet her in person. I won't go into exactly what I'm looking for here since it's really personal and particular to me, but suffice it to say it's not a matter of choosing the hottest skirt or bikini to go by and then "pouncing".
