Her name is Ariana. She is a blue eyed blonde with the cheeriest kindest personality. She now lives in Virginia and works in a Children's Dentistry office. So you get a grasp of her way of being, she dressed as Elsa from Frozen and as a Care Bear in a full-on onesie for Halloween last year.
"We dated for three years in Maracaibo, Venezuela and then he left to live in the United States." -she implies people from Maracaibo are loud and proud- "It had been two years since then and he still messaged me insisting I left the country too. I finally purchased my plane ticket to the US for March 2020. It was time to leave that shitty country. And then covid-19 came and all international flights closed. I waited until November and decided to travel along my uncle (who wanted to visit his son who recently had a baby). Flights were still closed from Venezuela. Not even the legal ground route between Venezuela and Colombia through Cucuta was open at this time. The plan was to go through the border "la trocha"(*) into Colombia and take a flight to the US from Bogota. We travelled for 3 days. Started at 6am on day 1 with a driver (referred by some of my parents' friends) who would drive us to a border city in Colombia. I dressed as badly as I could, wore no earrings and sat in that car. We drove through a series of houses and land, like we were driving through people's farms. There were gasoline barrels everywhere which led me to think this was the route taken to illegally transport gasoline. We stopped at a house where an old woman lived and we were offered the restroom. The driver washed the car, I believe so when we reach Colombia we will draw less attention. Guards stopped us several times along the way, and the man paid each of them. At one point I noticed an SUV following us closely, I saw our driver constantly looking back and started to worry. I have heard so many stories about women being raped here. I just prayed we did not have to get off the car and avoid a baggage check. The driver took a turn toward some house and the SUV went the other way. When we got to the border city, the driver took us to the bus station, we took a 4 hour bus to Barranquilla, again paid another guard. The issue was we did not have an entry stamp on our passports and the guard told us we would get a fine, we never received one. Honestly, so many people travelled through here in the following months I believe the government just let it go. We then took a flight from Barranquilla to Bogota. And made it in time for our flight to Miami. I lived with my cousin for a month while working on deliveries. Felt I was an inconvenience for them and moved for a few months to Orlando with some friends. Then he invited me to a trip to North Carolina with his family. I went, and I stayed. We got married and have not been apart since. I was worried I have changed too much in those two years apart. But it worked out."
*illegal roads between countries where people transit daily
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