Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to everyone!
I had a great Christmas and got some really cool presents. It was great to spend Christmas with my family again. I was able to a couple of years ago but this year felt a lot more like it used to.
I got some really cool presents this year. One of which was an iPod dock for my iPod which has a radio, alarm clock and much more built in. I also got a home brewing kit to make some... um... delicious beverages.
My favorite present of all is:
Ryanna! Thats right. I'm now happily engaged to the most amazing woman I've ever met in my life. I'm very lucky to have her and can't wait till we are married.
For those of you who haven't heard the story before, here it is. This February, I traveled to the Philippines to see my parents who were going there for a wedding of a friend of ours. Before my parents left the US, they asked me if there was anything that I wanted them to bring from the US. I am in a habit of always adding something silly to the end of the list so I jokingly asked for them to bring me a "girlfriend." Well, when I arrived one of the first things out of my mom's mouth is "There is a gal here from Duncanville that you HAVE to meet!" Now, my mom is constantly trying to set me up so I'm a little used to this but it surprised me that someone else from Duncanville was staying at the guest house. So I went in and met her and her friend and thought they were nice but didn't think much more about it. They were in the Philippines for 6 weeks volunteering at the school in Bagabag while on their trip around the world.
Amazingly, even though we both had lived in Duncanville for over a decade and are the same age, we had never met each other before. We know many of the same people and she even went to Mexico with my sister in 1999. She also lives a couple of houses over from where my sister-in-law lived with her family till recently.
The next evening, I went down to the common room to check my e-mail and found Ryanna (the woman my mom was talking about) was also checking her e-mail. We struck up a conversation for the next several hours and I was really surprised by how much we had in common and how much I liked talking with her. At the end, I got her e-mail address and told her I'd look her up when I got back to Duncanville... in 10 months. She later told me she wrote down that she thought I was an interesting guy but she didn't think I would actually contact her.
The next day was Sunday and I went to a tiny local church of the friends who were getting married and while there, the young adults rather forcefully invited me to the Valentine's Day party that evening. I didn't really want to go alone so I invited Ryanna and her friend to come with me. They agreed to go so we went.
While at the party, people continually mistook me and Ryanna for dating but we kept insisting that we had just met. They played lots of couple games, the most infamous one was the orange game. The girl is blindfolded and handed an orange while the guy puts his hands behind is back. The girl has to peel the orange and feed it to the guy the fastest. I had the bright idea of having Ryanna put the whole peeled orange in my mouth so I could chew and swallow faster. She did and when I bit down, orange juice went straight down my throat the wrong way and I started coughing orange juice all over her. She was very gracious and forgiving of me, which I was very grateful for.
The next day, Ryanna and her friend went up to Bagabag, a city 8 hours drive away (although they flew). My parents and I were in the Philippines for 3 weeks and were trying to figure out what we wanted to do for most of the time. We were discussing going to the beach, Nasuli or Bagabag. After Ryanna and her friend left, I realized that I could use the time to go and get to know here a little better so I told my parents that I wanted to go up to Bagabag for the week. They looked into some flights but there was nothing that was going to work so it wasn't looking likely. We were sitting around that afternoon and someone walked into the common room and recognized my dad. Turns out his wife worked with my dad in Dallas and he was in Manila to pick up a singing group and bring them to Bagabag. They weren't ready to go so he was going to be driving up there by himself that evening. I offered to go along and he was happy to have me go.
The next morning I was all alone in the Bagabag guest house not really sure where Ryanna and her friend were and what I was going to do. I went off and found the internet guy so I could hook my computer up and check my e-mail and found him laying cable in front of one of the houses on the base. Having nothing to do I helped him and wiled away the morning chatting with him. Right about noon Ryanna and her friend walked out of the house we were working in front of and seemed very surprised to see me. Hannah said hi but Ryanna looked really shocked, said they had to get to someone's house for lunch and ran off. I figured that either she liked me or thought I was stalking her. Since I hadn't seen her very much I also figured it wasn't the latter. I stopped by that night and found out I was right.
We ended up spending a whirlwind few days together in Bagabag before I returned to Manila for the wedding one girlfriend the better. However, it looked like it was going to be another 10 months or so before we could see each other again.
It turned out that Ryanna was able to visit me in Aceh, Indonesia for 5 days on her way from the Philippines to London. It was great to see her again then and deepen our relationship. Next, I traveled home at the end of June to see her for 10 days before returning to finish out my contract. I was still committed to traveling with Stephen up to Russia so we arranged it for our girlfriends to join us for a couple of weeks through Laos and China. Finally on November 29th I made it back to Duncanville.
Since then we've been getting to know each other even more and on Christmas eve, I asked her to marry me and she agreed. We're hoping to get married sometime in June.
So... Merry Christmas to all of you and thanks for reading my blog all this time!
I had a great Christmas and got some really cool presents. It was great to spend Christmas with my family again. I was able to a couple of years ago but this year felt a lot more like it used to.
I got some really cool presents this year. One of which was an iPod dock for my iPod which has a radio, alarm clock and much more built in. I also got a home brewing kit to make some... um... delicious beverages.
My favorite present of all is:
Ryanna! Thats right. I'm now happily engaged to the most amazing woman I've ever met in my life. I'm very lucky to have her and can't wait till we are married.
For those of you who haven't heard the story before, here it is. This February, I traveled to the Philippines to see my parents who were going there for a wedding of a friend of ours. Before my parents left the US, they asked me if there was anything that I wanted them to bring from the US. I am in a habit of always adding something silly to the end of the list so I jokingly asked for them to bring me a "girlfriend." Well, when I arrived one of the first things out of my mom's mouth is "There is a gal here from Duncanville that you HAVE to meet!" Now, my mom is constantly trying to set me up so I'm a little used to this but it surprised me that someone else from Duncanville was staying at the guest house. So I went in and met her and her friend and thought they were nice but didn't think much more about it. They were in the Philippines for 6 weeks volunteering at the school in Bagabag while on their trip around the world.
Amazingly, even though we both had lived in Duncanville for over a decade and are the same age, we had never met each other before. We know many of the same people and she even went to Mexico with my sister in 1999. She also lives a couple of houses over from where my sister-in-law lived with her family till recently.
The next evening, I went down to the common room to check my e-mail and found Ryanna (the woman my mom was talking about) was also checking her e-mail. We struck up a conversation for the next several hours and I was really surprised by how much we had in common and how much I liked talking with her. At the end, I got her e-mail address and told her I'd look her up when I got back to Duncanville... in 10 months. She later told me she wrote down that she thought I was an interesting guy but she didn't think I would actually contact her.
The next day was Sunday and I went to a tiny local church of the friends who were getting married and while there, the young adults rather forcefully invited me to the Valentine's Day party that evening. I didn't really want to go alone so I invited Ryanna and her friend to come with me. They agreed to go so we went.
While at the party, people continually mistook me and Ryanna for dating but we kept insisting that we had just met. They played lots of couple games, the most infamous one was the orange game. The girl is blindfolded and handed an orange while the guy puts his hands behind is back. The girl has to peel the orange and feed it to the guy the fastest. I had the bright idea of having Ryanna put the whole peeled orange in my mouth so I could chew and swallow faster. She did and when I bit down, orange juice went straight down my throat the wrong way and I started coughing orange juice all over her. She was very gracious and forgiving of me, which I was very grateful for.
The next day, Ryanna and her friend went up to Bagabag, a city 8 hours drive away (although they flew). My parents and I were in the Philippines for 3 weeks and were trying to figure out what we wanted to do for most of the time. We were discussing going to the beach, Nasuli or Bagabag. After Ryanna and her friend left, I realized that I could use the time to go and get to know here a little better so I told my parents that I wanted to go up to Bagabag for the week. They looked into some flights but there was nothing that was going to work so it wasn't looking likely. We were sitting around that afternoon and someone walked into the common room and recognized my dad. Turns out his wife worked with my dad in Dallas and he was in Manila to pick up a singing group and bring them to Bagabag. They weren't ready to go so he was going to be driving up there by himself that evening. I offered to go along and he was happy to have me go.
The next morning I was all alone in the Bagabag guest house not really sure where Ryanna and her friend were and what I was going to do. I went off and found the internet guy so I could hook my computer up and check my e-mail and found him laying cable in front of one of the houses on the base. Having nothing to do I helped him and wiled away the morning chatting with him. Right about noon Ryanna and her friend walked out of the house we were working in front of and seemed very surprised to see me. Hannah said hi but Ryanna looked really shocked, said they had to get to someone's house for lunch and ran off. I figured that either she liked me or thought I was stalking her. Since I hadn't seen her very much I also figured it wasn't the latter. I stopped by that night and found out I was right.
We ended up spending a whirlwind few days together in Bagabag before I returned to Manila for the wedding one girlfriend the better. However, it looked like it was going to be another 10 months or so before we could see each other again.
It turned out that Ryanna was able to visit me in Aceh, Indonesia for 5 days on her way from the Philippines to London. It was great to see her again then and deepen our relationship. Next, I traveled home at the end of June to see her for 10 days before returning to finish out my contract. I was still committed to traveling with Stephen up to Russia so we arranged it for our girlfriends to join us for a couple of weeks through Laos and China. Finally on November 29th I made it back to Duncanville.
Since then we've been getting to know each other even more and on Christmas eve, I asked her to marry me and she agreed. We're hoping to get married sometime in June.
So... Merry Christmas to all of you and thanks for reading my blog all this time!
posted by Randall Knutson at
11:22 AM
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