Who are We? Time to meet Damian!

Now, about my lovely husband, Damian. Damian was born in Sao Paulo Brasil; although his parents are from the Midwest in the US they met in the Peace Corps in Brasil, traveled around the world, got married, had a few kids and decided to return to Brasil to raise their family there. Damian and his family moved to Minnesota when he was 15, and Damian considers himself to be a Brasilian-American.  He dedicated most of his young life to gymnastics and he still has some major skills today. Damian is also a geek, and also attended MIT. However, we never met in college and our love story did not begin until many, many years later. Professionally, Damian chose the finance track and stuck with it. He works in Debt Capital Markets for an investment back in the US, and that bank has so generously granted Damian an eight month leave of absence for us to pursue our dream trip.

As you can imagine, Damian was born with the travel bug in his blood. After his parents met in the Peace Corps they spent two years traveling around the world, getting married in Brussels and even appearing as extras in an Indian Bollywood movie! During Damian’s youth his family took trips to explore as many nooks and crannies of Brasil as possible. They had yearly beach excursions to Buzios, which I know compose of many of Damian’s favorite childhood memories.

Damian has continued to explore the world on his own, especially in the last ten years. When he has transitioned between jobs he has been forced to take a “garden leave” ranging anywhere from 1-4 months and he has taken advantage of that time. On one break he went to Egypt, another to Japan and another to Southeast Asia. Damian finds adventure and joy in traveling as low-key as possible. As an example, his trip to Nicaragua included buying a second-hand bicycle, traversing the entire country via bike and staying in the backyard of a local, in a room built of cinder blocks, no windows and a single light bulb hanging from a chain (the volcano picture above is from that trip).

While Damian and I are super compatible in so many ways, we do have slightly (read: quite) different travel styles 🙂 More to come on how we work to reconcile those!