If you didn't believe in love up to this moment - now is the time.

I clearly remember that day: I was in Guatemala City sitting with my best friend Karina in a dusty room. I curled my hair and every 3 minutes asked her: "So, how do I look???" Karina was skeptical and threw slippers at me, telling me not to interfere with her work.

30 minutes after the last sneaker, I kissed Andrew Schwark at the airport of La Aurora for the first time.

There is very little romance in this story, because there were more requests to fix the toilet than proposals to go to the movies. We, actually, have never even been to the cinema. And neither - on a date.

In this story there is a little romance, but a lot of quiet conversations in the long evenings, cups of bitter coffee, and kisses: less on the lips, and more -on the nose :). In this story, he loves me by stroking a palm of my hand, giving his shoulder for me to sleep on while traveling and taking tons of medicine for the Health&Help clinic in his luggage.

I do not know what I did to deserve this endless happiness and how in our Godforsaken Guatemalan village I met a person, with whom, at any place in the world, I can call home.

I love Andrew not for who he is, but for what I am next to him: every day, with his attitude and infinite love for the family, God and strangers, he shows what a real man can be and what I can be.

I clearly remember that day. At the airport La Aurora I made the best decision of my life: I decided to be with Andrew Schwark.

On July 19, 2018, 10 months after our first kiss, under the pouring rain on the rocks of Aigir, Russia, Andrew asked me to be his wife. He had come to Russia to ask my father for my hand in marriage. And it was truly beautiful!

Written by Viktoriya Valikova.

Mistakes corrected by Andrew Schwark.