Beth and Lyndon: La boda de mi pataza

I'm having a lot of problems writing this for many reasons.

Maybe I should give some background?

I have a really good friend named Mario. He is one of the best friends that I ever had, and I learned a lot from him, both good and bad. We met in Panama in 2003. He's an amazing and intelligent person (everyone knows that intelligence is the most important quality in a friend). I was an international student and he was in charge of the international program, so I had a lot of time to get to know him, and we really hit it off. We have a lot in common, and we use to talk for hours on end. He's a lovely person, and I will always be grateful to him for everything, but most especially for moving to England so that I could meet my husband (that's another story for another time.) Here's a picture of me and Mario in Oxford in 2004.

Anyway, when Mario told me he was getting married, I knew there was nothing that was going to stop me. I even bought my tickets back in September. How the hell was I know that a volcano in Iceland was going to erupt and screw up all of the carefully laid plains of mice and men?

On Thursday, I got up, got ready, and was checking my e-mails before leaving for the airport when I got an e-mail saying that my plane had been cancelled due to a volcano. I thought it was a joke. I checked the news, and it turned out to be true. I was really upset. So, we quickly re-booked a flight to Gatwick and rented a car to be able to drive up to Liverpool. Not ideal, but better than not going at all. Twenty minutes after booking the flight and the car, it was cancelled. So then we tried to book a ferry to take the car over and drive up, but Condor Ferries' website crashed all over the UK. So, we drove to the harbour, where we waited for over 3 hours. Luckily, the nice young woman there helped us to get our car on, and we got one of the last places on the boat.

We got to Weymouth on the ferry, and then drove to Liverpool. Once we got to Liverpool (at 3AM), we tried to find the hotel. I swear, someone really didn't want us to go to that wedding. The GPS told us that we were arriving at the hotel, but we couldn't see it. She said to turn left, so we did and wound up on a tunnel that looked like it was never going to end. We wound up at a toll booth with no money. We managed to scrounge up the £1.40 needed for the toll, but it was literally the last of our money. We had 2p left. So, we started driving around trying to figure out how to get back. We knew we were lost, the GPS was also lost. It was a nightmare. To make it worse, an unmarked police car pulled up beside us, flashed their warrant card, and asked to us pull over. Turns out they thought I was a prostitute and Lyndon was picking me up because we drove through a redlight district. Excellent. Luckily, they believed us when we said we were lost. They took us to a cash machine to get some money to pay the toll back and led us back to the tunnel. I finally got to sleep about 4:30 Friday morning.

On Friday I was able to go to see some of Liverpool. My thoughts: it's this odd juxtaposition between old and modern, and it's quite incongruous. I loved some of the architecture. Here's a picture of the inside of the Anglican cathedral. Went to dinner with Mario et al on Friday night. That was fun. I forgot how much fun it was just to hang out with him and Joe (his brother) and just laugh! He gave us a chocolate habanero pepper. Sooooo hot. But I didn't want to look like a wuss, so I just sat and smiled. Meanwhile, Joe was dying beside me. It was such a fun night. I really do miss having my friends around.

Saturday was the wedding. Mario was handsome and Kirsty was beautiful, as it should be. I'm really happy for mi diablito. El merece la felicidad. Here's a few pictures from the wedding.