Welcome to Love Week! Today is Day #1 and we have just left for Wales to celebrate 10 years of marriage with family and friends! You can follow along with the hashtag: #RyanAndBonnie and feel free to send us messages on twitter using that hashtag! I have asked my blog friend, Erika, to be a guest poster today and gave her the theme ‘love’. She came back with an amazing outlook on her First Date. Since the First Date is where it all starts, I thought it only fitting that we commence Love Week with Erika. I ‘met’ Erika only recently when we were participating in the blogging Every Day in May challenge. People come in our lives for a reason and I knew from reading her blog we were destined to be friends. I hope you all enjoy reading her post today and have fun getting to know her just as I did.
Thank you Erika for accepting the challenge to guest post for me. <3
Hey everyone! I’m Erika from Chimerikal and I’m super honored to be a part of Bonnie Rose’s Love Week. A bit about me? I’m a semi-nomadic girl in my mid-twenties who blogs about traveling, growing up, and self-confidence (basically: life!). You can read my blog here.
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I recently celebrated my one-year anniversary with my boyfriend and I thought it would be fun to talk about our first date. And given the circumstances, it’s pretty miraculous that we ended up going on a second one. 
After a disastrous day in New York City, I found myself sitting on the curb in-between two parked cars, scarfing down a salad in between gulps of water. Cars passed noisily in the distance and every now and then I got a whiff of exhaust fumes in my face. Ah, we couldn’t have designed a more romantic setting for our first date.
Had it really been less than a day ago that I had been nervous about whether or not we would get along? About how I would look and what I would say? I laughed to myself as he slid closer to me on the curb and took my hand in his.
Tyler — the guy sitting next to me — and I had met about two months prior at a wedding.
I was a bridesmaid and he was a groomsman. Looking back, it definitely was one of those moments that felt like it was straight out of a movie. I remember thinking: “I can’t believe this is happening” as Tyler asked me to dance and we talked the night away. And our fate was pretty much sealed when I caught the bouquet (at least, that’s what I choose to believe, haha).
From that day on, we communicated everyday, but we were in a long-distance relationship — separated by quite a few states. As luck (or destiny) would have it, we both had overlapping dates that we would be on vacation in New York City. We arranged it so that we could spend a couple of days together. I was excited but nervous — would we hit it off like at the wedding?
In retrospect, I now realize I was worried about all of the wrong things.
I should have instead worried about:
1. Starting our day off with the surprising news that his rental car had been towed.
2. Being told by the NYPD that it was at the tow pound.
3. Walking a bajillion blocks to said tow pound which was “down the street.”
4. In the pouring rain. (Surprise! Doesn’t matter if it was August and it had been sunny all week long.)
5. The cats and dogs falling out of the sky. (Seriously, it was raining like CRAZY.)
6. Arriving at the address only to find ourselves at a museum of sorts. Where were the cars?
7. Finding our way around that building to the other unmarked, hidden building with misleading signs.
8. Only to find out that we needed the rental car agreement.
9. Which was back at the hotel. A bajillion blocks away. In the pouring rain.
10. Walking back to the hotel to get dry clothing — including warmer clothes.
11. Leaving the hotel only to have it be bright and sunny. Of couuuurse.
12. Deciding to go to Central Park to cheer ourselves up, only to take the Subway in the wrong direction.
13. Arriving, sitting and relaxing, then deciding to take a Pedi-cab to the nearest subway station because we were tired of walking. The driver pointed to his sign and said it would be $15.
14. Which was a sort of steep price because we were poor students on an already tight budget in NYC and we knew the car being towed would pretty much eat up all of the “fun money” we had (and then some).
15. But surprise! After a lovely ride through Central Park, our driver tells us the ride is $40.
16. He drops us off in front of the Museum of Natural History, which is where we wanted to go originally but opted out of it earlier that day because it was too expensive. How much? $20 each.
17. Shocked and deflated, we decide to walk to the tow pound instead of ride the subway since we were running out of money.
18. We get to the tow pound, which is overflowing with people. Earlier, there had been about five people there. Now there are about forty.
19. We then proceed to sit on the hard linoleum floor by the public restrooms because there are no chairs left.
20. For three hours. Comfy.
21. Finally, we’re called up and told that the total for the day’s events comes to $500+ dollars. Let me enter that into my currency exchange calculator… and yeah, that comes to about $17,489,984 in broke student dollars.
22. We drive back to the hotel in the rental car and look around for free parking that’s actually free.
23. After finding a spot (and verifying it’s free over and over again), we walk around looking for food. We end up picking up food from places that don’t have seating.
24. So, we sit our tired selves down on the curb, wedged in-between parked cars.
25. And we look at each other, smile, laugh and say we’d do it all over again.
My first date with Tyler was disastrous, but I’m so thankful for it. Because I got to see him for who he truly is — I got to see his character. And he got to see mine. (Through the smudged make-up, scraggly hair, and oversized jacket that I sported for much of the day. Thanks rain.)
That date set a solid foundation for our relationship — a foundation of support, communication, trust and endurance. It allowed me to open up in a way that I never would have before — for I was the kind of girl who had my walls up pretty high.
Falling in love can be beautiful, but relationships often fall apart when life doesn’t go our way. I feel so fortunate that I got to see how he is — how we are — when obstacles (like a million of them) are thrown our way.
In our misery, we found joy together — laughing at our misfortune and holding hands the entire time. And when I found myself thinking that I would live that day over again if it meant I got more time with him, I knew that we had found something pretty special.
To read more about Erika’s misadventures in travel and other semi-nomadic reflections, visit her blog or follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Bloglovin‘.
