Saying I Love You

       When Xeny and I first met, I wasn't really that crazy about him. I was like, "Meh". I thought he had beautiful eyes and he was a real gentleman, but I wasn't falling head over heels. It might sound like bragging if I say it, but I'll do it anyway: he was falling hard! Yep, there you go. I'm a heartbreaker.  Anyway, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to talk to him again so I was just being silly. But then he mentioned that he was an artist.
Oh? You don't say....
And then he vowed to paint a picture of me. The most beautiful picture I've ever seen.
Go on....
You see, up until that very moment it had always been my life's ambition to become an artist's muse. (Seriously, I was like 12 and searching Wikihow for tips) (Embarrassing fact about me #1) 
 So obviously I agreed to talk to him again, just to see how this picture turned out. And you know what? Not the most beautiful picture I've ever seen. He did my hair a little too red, and my cheeks a little too puffy.
But suddenly he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.
He made that? Just for me? That must have taken hours!
And, like Bridget Jones's Mr. Darcy, he loved me just as I was.
Plus he was adorable! He was so shy that he could barely even talk to me. He just stared at me, blushed, and typed something into Skype. Talk about feeding a girl's ego! He was a scared little puppy I had to coax out of his doghouse.

Of course, now I wish he would get back in his doghouse. Turns out he's a huge weirdo. :P

I think the big deciding factor for our relationship was a couple days after we met. My mom was having a medical issue and she wasn't sure if she should go to the hospital or not. We aired on the side of caution and went, but then turned around and came home when we realized it would be a several hour wait to get in. I didn't work the next day, so I told her I would stay up all night and check on her every couple of hours. She ended up being fine, it was just vertigo or something.

But that evening I stayed up all night and Skyped with Xeny. He was concerned for my mom, he kept reminding me to check on her. So we talked and got to know each other, we flirted, we blushed, we fell in love.

I remember driving me car around, maybe only a week after I had met Xeny, and I was just thinking to myself, "This is stupid. You don't love him. You don't know him."  And then the other side of my head, the side that makes all the girly giggles went, "Teeheeeheee Omg Omg heee heee".  And you can't argue with that logic!  I figured if you feel it, say it. 
So that evening when I talked to Xeny, I got all serious. I sat up straight, I looked him right in the webcam and said, "Shkelzen. I think I love you."
And he thought he loved me too.  :)

Looking back, was it really love? I don't know. But it was wonderful. It was both of our first 'I love you'. It was the start of our crazy roller-coaster. And it was really, really right.

Love,
Kaylyn

P.S. Here's Xeny holding the picture he painted way back when.

Where the heck is Albania?

When Xeny told me he was from Albania, I was like, "Nice one! But actually, where are you from?" . . . Awkward.
 
For those of you who don't know (ie: anyone who isn't a geographer or doesn't happen to know someone from there) Albania is a coastal country on the Adriatic sea. You know what else is on the Adriatic sea? Greece and Italy! Albania is basically right between those two, except Italy is across the sea. But barely. My man told me that once a man and his dog swam across the sea to Italy to escape communist reign.

Oh yeah P.S. - They used to be a communist country.  It was abolished in 1990, so before my fiancee was born. But his parents were raised in a communist era! My mind is just completely blown by that. Unfortunately the language barrier between us is pretty huge, I only know around 150 words in Albanian and they only know how to say "goodnight" and "cheese" ... but his dad thinks cheese is the word for cheers so I don't know if that counts.  So I can't really ask them what it was like, and I don't know if they want to discuss it any ways.

Well communist history, rampant firearm manufacturing and blood feuding aside, Albania is a beautiful country! (I kid, I don't know if that's as much of an issue as people make it out to be). In all seriousness Albania is a gorgeous country with really diverse scenery: it's mountainous, it's coastal, there are farms, villages, and the capital city has over 1 million citizens. Another difference between Albania and other European countries is how cheap everything is! You can buy a kilogram of tomatoes for $1!  I don't know why you would want to, but you can. Naturally, this is a reflection of how poor the country is. There is a lot of poverty that was hard for me to see, coming from such a rich and fortunate country.  But it's okay. We need to see those things. I needed to see those things. And as tourism goes, I recommend it! Check out these beautiful pictures I took the last time I was there.

Did I add that last one in there just to show off a gorgeous picture of me? Maybe. 

But as you can see, Albania is beautiful!!! 

 So there ya have it folks, you've seen a little bit more of the world today.

Entry Number 1 (Or Why You Should Read My Blog)

Hello World,

      My name's Kay and, like many fanciful twenty-somethings living in a western culture, I find myself overrun with those pesky things we call thoughts and ideas. Horrible, I know. So what's a girl to do? Write a blog about it, obviously!

This isn't going to be a blog about DIY miracles - mainly because I'm lazy and ain't nobody got time fo dat!
I won't be dishing out valuable fashion advice - I wear your grandpa's clothes. I don't look incredible.
Nor will I be telling you all my cooking secrets - not because I don't have any, but because I'm selfish and I want everyone to think that I make the world's greatest lasagna and ask me what I put in my cookies.
Any way, this is going to be an ongoing rant about me and my fiancee. (But you already guessed that from the title, you clever champ!)

So what's the deal with us, huh? Well if I'm going to expect you to spend your Saturday nights curled up on your couch with a cup of hot chocolate and your laptop just to read about my life, I better tell you the good stuff. We're both trained assassins. Lol. Jk. We're boring. We're a couple of lame-joke-making, hand-holding, God-loving, dream-date=grocery-shopping nerds. And proud of it!

I suppose the only interesting thing about us is that we met through destiny. And not like some girl named Destiny, like legit meaning-of-life kind of destiny. I live in Canada and he lives in Albania. Those are two pretty removed countries, both in geography and in culture. Realistically speaking we have no business knowing each other, let alone being all mushy gushy in love with each other. But we do and we are. So that's nice! We're pretty sure that the impossibility of our relationship is just a sign that God's got his hand in it and he'll work it out in his time. We met accidentally online on May 3rd, 2012 and we have not looked back since.

(Well to be honest, I wasn't sure about him at first. But that's a story for another time!)

Regardless, we love each other and on August 2nd, 2013 he asked me to be his wife. And I said yes.

:D