My 6 Month Journey Into Colombia
The Story of Sheilagh, Part 3
Editor’s note: check out the first two installments in this autobiographical series from one of GOTD’s newest contributors here and here.
After college, I bounced around for a while. Among other things, I spent another summer working on the aforementioned ship and later landed in Prague for a month, thinking I’d stay for a while to teach English. Then I decided that, actually, I really wanted to work on my Spanish, so I headed back across the Atlantic to spend six months teaching in Colombia (the South American country, not Columbia, the New York university).
I wasn’t particularly nervous about going to Colombia, which at the time still had a pretty rough reputation among Americans, but I was a little nervous about telling my parents my plans. They had, I assumed, only recently recovered from my semester abroad in a place where you had to listen for rocket sirens. But they remained pretty unflappable at the news. At that point they had evidently come to expect these kinds of about-faces that made perfect sense to me and me alone. They were supportive if baffled by my choice. This time, however, they wouldn’t be visiting; they’d see me when I got back.
After six months of teaching, hazardous bus journeys, salsa dancing, and laughing with many warm-hearted Colombians, I headed back to New England, ready to stay in one place (at least for a while). While working full-time, I wrote a couple of novels that, while better than my adolescent achievement, I am now grateful were never published. I met Jorge, a talented artist, former Navy aircraft mechanic, and the best person I’ve ever known, who brings order to my chaos and light to my life, and I was lucky enough to marry him. We bought a house, rescued a socially awkward but lovable mutt, and had our daughter, who became the center of our world.
And during those recent years, I finally opened my mind to the story ideas that spoke the most to me but that I had long resisted because I’d decided it would be too much work to write historical fiction well. I threw myself into research, I started writing the kinds of books that I really want to read, and I imagine I’ll never look back.