I am finally back and settled in after a week "vacation" in North Dakota. However, it was truly one of those vacations from which I need a vacation to relax from, as I celebrated my younger sister's high school graduation, and my good friend Chantelle's wedding to her lovely husband, Nick. Congrats to both and here's to great success in these new steps in your lives!
Throughout the week, as usually happens when I am around both my family and people who don't know me well, I was asked to tell the story of how I met my fiance, Brandon. He and I often think that if we scripted our story together, it would make a fabulous one, however, I will do my best to tell it without him in written form!
It has to do with giving back, the theme of my last blog. And it all starts with an ex-boyfriend of mine from college!
In Feb. 2007, my boyfriend at the time convinced me to sign up for a Pay It Forward Spring Break Trip. This included traveling on a crowed bus for a week with other college students doing an act of community service in each town that we stopped in along our way to Washington, D.C. Luckily for us ; ) we broke up that month and decided to take separate tour buses on different routes.
During the duration of the trip, I experienced the joys of Peoria IL, Marietta GA, Raleigh NC, Lexington KY, and the wonderful Washington D.C. In Peoria, we trimmed a banana and papaya tree in the zoo's greenhouse, and took home baby cactus clippings. We braved the wild woods of Raleigh which were overgrown with an invasive species of thorn bushes resembling those in The Sleeping Beauty.
We cleaned a large house in Lexington where families stayed while waiting for their loved ones to get better in the hospital. We even attempted to clean one of the dirtiest river in North America in Washington D.C., which was filled with giant tires, toilets, old cans, and other debris which was buried in the mud of the river and surrounding creeks.
But it was in Marietta where I first noticed Brandon when he volunteered to be a translator for the Spanish-speaking groundskeepers who were going to escort us around the apartment complex which we were asked to clean. Here, beer cans, broken glass bottles and dirty, used hypodermic needles were commonplace.
It was here where I followed Brandon around the complex as he talked with the groundskeeper in Spanish. I had never been impressed by Spanish before, in fact, I hated it when my friends tried to practice their broken Spanish for class in high school. But Brandon spoke it so well, I couldn't help but be impressed and attracted to his very cool and useful skill!
As we wandered the complex, we came upon a creek surrounding the complex. In the creek, it seemed that there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of plastic shopping bags clogging the creek along with other smaller and larger pieces of garbage. Although I can't recall how we decided to climb down to the creek, I suddenly found myself with Brandon picking up a plastic bag, only to discover that it held-
dog poo.
That's right. Instead of throwing their dog poop into the garbage next to their apartments after scooping it from the ground, residents chose to fling it into the creek behind their apartments. We had no idea what we were getting into. After picking bags for a half an hour, and after noticing that the groundskeeper was smiling at us in a way that said "Very kind of you to try, but don't worry to much, you'll never make a dent in this mess...", we climbed out of the creek bed, shaking our heads in disgust.
But throughout the trip, I began to notice Brandon more, although I thought to myself that I would never see him again, as at the time we were attending different schools in different towns. And so, on the last leg of the trip back home, I received a note from Brandon (a personalized note which Brandon wrote for each person on the bus) saying that he thought I was definitely the coolest person on the bus.
I tucked that note into my wallet, and it stayed there for a year and half later, until my wallet was stolen at work. I could have cared less about the money, the driver's lisence, or the cell phone in the wallet. I only cared about losing that lovely note, which I had kept wistfully after the trip, not knowing that he would ask me on a date a week after the trip, and that we would be together from then on.
That trip has fostered a sense of adventure, love of giving back, and an interest in travel and volunteering into our relationship. I always tell people that if you want to meet someone to grow old with, then do what you love, because you are bound to find someone else who loves to do the same things as you do in the process!
Any fabulous giving back stories, or even instances when giving lead to an even greater reward than you could have imagined? Share them on your blog, and link it with a comment please!
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