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The day was Valentine's, 2003. I had just arrived in London on a working holiday visa. Having located my one and only contact in that grandest of grand cities, I found myself in Bayswater at a backpackers' hostel. Feeling lonely and in need of a comforting reminder of home, I was relieved when my brother's ex-girlfriend agreed to catch up for a drink.

And so, on that famously romantic day, where Cupid is out and ready to strike when you least expect it, I arrived at Hyde Park Hostel unaware that my life was about to change forever.

It was the boy who greeted me at the door and informed me that my friend would be "down in a minute", who fell victim to that shifty Cupid and his formidable arrow.

Chatting idly, our exchange of words lasted less than five minutes. Soon my friend arrived and swept me out the door to pass the night away at a shady pub decorated with red hearts and spotted with sleazy geezers trying to "get some".

Cupid's arrow, however, somehow bypassed me on that first encounter, and I gave that boy not even a second thought.

Nevertheless, five days later he snagged me.

It was on this night that I first paid attention to the cute Mexican, unaware that his big heart had already fallen hard and fast for mine. His accent was adorable. Having difficulty with his j's, he would pronounce words such as "jacket" like "yacket". Oh how I giggled!

He was funny and his skin was a beautiful bronzed brown. This is quite the contrast to mine, which is (oh so tan wannabe) white with freckles. I fell deep into his dark brown eyes as he fell deep into my green ones. Definitely the initial attraction on both our parts was the exoticness of the other.

Two weeks later, having scored myself an opportunity to work as a tour guide, I left London for a month long training trip around Europe. The night before I parted, he asked me to be his girlfriend and I accepted.

For the next seven days, as I traveled to Paris, Chartres, Nimes, Nice, Monte Carlo, and finally Barcelona, I found that I was really missing my new "boyfriend". I also felt I wasn't given the freedom to really experience Europe. Coming to the conclusion that I was wasting my time, I walked off the job and spent the day getting lost in the little side streets of Barcelona, which is, by the way, one of the best cities in the world.

When I arrived back three weeks later, we started our relationship for real, getting to know each other and our idiosyncrasies. Over the next couple of years, I would learn he was an outrageous

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