Heather Hauptman

This is a true story of one dyslexic, left-handed woman's adventure. The journey of this 40-something begins as a chance meeting with a tall dark stranger in a grocery store, after which her life's course is forever altered. The tall dark stranger, who is from the end of the world, becomes her mate, and the love of her life. He leads her far away to his home town, where she repeatedly asks herself, "What the hell am I doing here?”

Settling down in the subtropical province of Corrientes, Argentina, our heroine finds herself in unfamiliar surrounds. The people of the small town are friendly, and she smiles or nods her head following appropriate social cues, hoping that they will stop trying to talk to her. She minimizes speaking, which is not her custom, because she speaks Spanish like a turd. Despite this, she hopes to someday speak Spanish with total abandon.

She struggles creating a new home for herself and her mate, as she has no job, and no prospects for one. Target, Walmart and Goodwill aren't here to cheaply fill her empty apartment with furnishings. She must make due with what is available to her, so wooden fruit crates become a couch, a bookshelf and a dresser, while old newspapers become a coffee table. Even the tires of her trusty 2006 Prius, a car she affectionately calls Blue Moon, have had a necessary rebirth. The Goodyears were bald after the three-month journey from Arvada, Colorado, to Bella Vista, Corrientes, and have been refashioned into a comfy chair.

She fought it at first, being in this new home. It's too hot, there are too many mosquitos and there's no peanut butter. Now she resigns herself to her fate. This is her home, for as long as she loves her Argentinian mate. He has returned home after many years away, and is fulfilling his dream of returning to school.

And so she starts anew on the other side of the world, making a life from the ground up after having left everything she had ever known behind. As she enters middle life, she is trying to embrace both the excitement and the struggle of living abroad. Her primary asset is time, and as the days and seasons pass in her new small town, she uses time to search for the specialness in every moment. The question that moves her: “What would you do if everyday could be a special day?”