Looks Like We Made It…
January 25th, 2008 @ 1:34 pm by Mrs. Penguin
Mr. Penguin and I have weathered the storms that any typical relationship weathers. We broke up for a year when he left for grad school, did the long distance relationship for a few years, moved into a 460 (!) sq. ft. apartment together, and bought a house. Some of it was rough, but for the most part it was very exciting.
His family decided to take a trip to Italy a couple years ago, where we would all be staying in a villa in Tuscany for 10 days together. I was excited for the trip, but mostly, I was anxious to see how well Mr. Penguin and I traveled, long distance, in close quarters, for that many days. Of course, we had spent many many more days in a row together by then, but there is something about traveling — the map bearing, sightseeing, on-the-go traveling that REALLY stresses people out. Many a family has been left in tears (namely, mine) over getting lost overseas, travel insomnia, and sleeping in incredibly close (and sometimes sweaty) quarters. I remember mentioning to Mr. Penguin a few weeks before we left that this would be one of the “make it or break it” moments in our relationship. If we were miserable in Italy, after all the money we saved and the time we took off for it, I wasn’t really sure if our relationship would have ever quite recovered.
And BOY was it a test. We left while Mr. Penguin was smack in the middle of having the flu. Our flight was late, meaning we had to run 1.6 billion miles across Heathrow (seriously, what is that airport’s deal?) to catch our connecting flight. The cute little Fiat we rented was a lemon (or rather, a Limoncello) leaving the clutch burned out in the middle of rush hour traffic in Rome. For the entire trip, we had to let the car “rest” every 30 minutes or else it would burn out. On the first leg of our hike at Cinqueterre, I sprained my ankle, but hiked 4 of the towns anyway in a half-agony-half-adrenaline-induced-hallucinatory state. And the cherry on top? Our flight out of Rome was also late, meaning we had to take 2 additional connecting flights to make it back to San Francisco…which also meant that we missed Bart, which also meant an $80 cab ride back to Berkeley.
Through all the delays, illness, injury, and automotrauma, we kept HUGE smiles on our faces the whole trip through. It was an amazing family trip, no complaining, no yelling, no whining (but lots of wine-ing). As we fell asleep in our comfy bed after a harrowing 18 hours of travel, I realized…WE MADE IT.
Swapped some ideas regarding the future of Catholicism with the Pope. Meeting went well. Church still alive and well. You’re welcome, Pope B.
Coliseum. Not the crappy USC kind.
Powering through the hike at Cinqueterre at a rare moment where Germans with walking sticks were not trying to push me over.
Atop a Duomo in Sienna, our favorite city!
What was your “If we can make it here, we’ll make it anywhere” moment?
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19 Responses to “Looks Like We Made It…”
my fiance and i hitchhiked across canada together for a month. we were only 7 months into dating at this point. as if hitchhiking across the friggin’ country wasn’t hard enough… we were also producing a film together in the process. we were together 24/7 in the most stressful of situations and we almost did kill each other somewhere in manitoba… and again in BC… but i’m glad to say WE MADE IT!
Great story! Yay, you made it 
In order for us to be married, my fiance had to come back home to Oklahoma after living in Seattle for five years. We were nervous and anxious and worried about spending 37 hours in a car together (that’s 3! and 7! hours!). Not only that, but we spent the first leg of the car driving straight through - 28 hours - in a car so cramped we couldn’t push the seats back, and we couldn’t see out the back windshield, and any tiny stop meant everything went flying forward! And we had a mishap and had to buy tires after we had a flat on the side of the road in Colorado . . .
When we finally made it to Oklahoma and unpacked, we both just looked at each other said, “We are DEFINITELY doing the right thing by getting married.” Getting through that trip meant we could handle just about anything.
We took an 11-day transatlantic cruise over Thanksgiving. If we can spend 11 nights on a boat with only each other and 1500 elderly German people, we can do ANYTHING.
sienna is also my favorite italian city!
Family Pengy appears to attract the same attention from the Travel Gremlins as Team Beanchar does — except ours is usually a combo of infrastructure breakdown and the phrase “This is the worst weather we’ve had since World War II!”
The classic example of this was our trip to Perugia where our rental apartment featured an incorrectly-installed new toilet, owners unreachable for two days, and biblical flooding that washed away many of the little hill towns we had hoped to visit. I also had to dry my hair crouched backwards crab-walk style over the floor heater b/c the hairdryer shorted out.
Your captions are hilarious (and I’m glad you set the Pope straight!) and you are a total trooper to do the Cinqueterre wounded b/c that is some serious hiking. I’m also super impressed you drove in ROME– a feat I thought impossible without native Italian blood and/or Formula 1 experience.
I realized we’d be OK when I went on a 5 day cruise with his ENTIRE family of 50 people and I was actually sad to come home. It was so much fun, no stress, and filled with laughter. I knew then and there, we’d never be able to have both our families in close quarters like that because my family is so the opposite, but I knew he and I were going to be just fine together!
What a wonderful experience! You are smiling from ear to ear despite the ankles. Sweet story!
Oh wow, so many of them:
- FI’s 3rd year of med school, surgery and OB-GYN rotations. Yeah, it was fun getting to see him for a half hour each day before he had to go to sleep to get up at 3:45.
- Going to Wisconsin for 10 days to stay with his mother who I hadn’t met yet over the 2006 holidays.
- FI living with my parents the entire month of October without me while he did an away rotation in Nashville
- And most recently, spending Christmas with his father’s family. We were both miserable but really banded together as a team. That’s when I knew that we were really a “we”. And I made him promise that we would never do that again.
Our “we’re so going to make it” moment came when we packed up on now-husband’s house on Thanksgiving night, and moved in to our new house that weekend. (All of those people who you’ve helped move over the years do not come through on holidays!) And he even had to work on top of that, but we went at it as a team.
Less than 2 months into our relationship I finally quit my crappy “they’re really taking advantage of you” job. I gave then 3 months notice and trained my replacement because I’m way too nice and hence did not have a job when I was finished. I finally got a great job but it didn’t start for a month so I was unemployed for 2 months. We proceeded to be evicted shortly after that from our month to month lease (given 60 days notice) and had to apartment hunt under a lot of pressure. Now we are sharing an apartment (again because I am too nice and wanted to help her out) with my trying to find herself, in the middle of a divorce FSIL and her 2 kids. If that is not “If we can we make it” I don’t know what is.
My fiance quit his job working at MS (ie the devil) and moved to England where he didn’t have a job and knew nobody but me so we could see if we could “make it” (we had previously done long-distance for 2+ years). It was terrifying leading up to it, but as soon as he got here, all my worries disappeared- no more doubts/concerns!
I lived with him sophomore year of college and because of a really really CRAPPY a**hole roomate we spent all of our time that year in his 9×10 bedroom. That’s right, ate, slept, hung out, studied - everything.
I knew after that year that it would take a lot for us to get sick of each other — 3 years later it hasn’t ever happened once!
Our trial was a trip to Italy as well Lots of rain, and no money left to take a gondola ride once we got to Venice. But, we made it.
Our “we are going to make it” moment happend during this past August after he proposed to me. We were at the Burning Man festival and we were very excited to start our life together, but as we were leaving a series of events happened that were very intense.
First, it took six hours to get out of the festival in sweltering heat, we had to caravan with a 1976 RV that could only go 50 mph max, then outside of Reno he got a horrifying phone call that his best man to be and best friend was murdered in Chicago, and finally about midnight that night the old RV caught fire at a gas station with our friends still in the cab.
Watching my man save the lives of our two friends that had to escape the RV and seeing him single handedly extinguish the blaze sealed the deal for me. I had already said yes to his proposal but right then I knew he was the man I would want next to me through all the hardships that life throws our way. He is amazing.
That one’s easy - moving to Mongolia to be with Mr. Donut. It was my first time out of the US and I don’t think I could’ve picked a more challenging part of the world to jump into. The extreme climate and chaos, the not knowing one word of the language, and, at the time, Mr. Donut and I had only JUST gotten back together after many years spent apart. Up until he met me at the airport in Beijing, we’d spend a grand total of one week together in the previous 5 years. It was a HUGE leap of faith for both of us. But we knew that if our relationship could survive in the high stress atmosphere of such a foreign country, it could survive anywhere. And it did. I wouldn’t give up our time in Mongolia for anything. It showed me what we were made of as individuals and as a couple.
What a great story! I can’t be sure that I would’ve been able to make it through a trip like that and it’s inspiring to know that you and your lucky man were able to stick it through.
Your story reminded me of a much more unglamorous moment between me and my boyfriend this past week. We were both having bad skin days and at some point during the evening, we were both staring into our reflections in his tiny bathroom mirror, picking at all of our facial imperfections when all of a sudden, he said, “We are most definitely getting married.” When I asked why, he explained that there was no way he couldn’t marry a girl that he was comfortable enough to pop pimples with.
Okay, so maybe not the most romantic story ever, but I thought it was sweet and funny at the time. 
Studying for the bar exam together! It was a couple months of pure, unadulterated hell— incredible stress and anxiety, coupled with days and nights of law, law, law. I figured we would either kill each other that summer or be in it for life. Looks like it’s going to be the latter, thankfully.
Mrs. Penguin, Sacramento
Age and Occupation: 26, Video & TV Producer/Director/Editor
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I'm a silly mess of a girl who, above all else in this world, LOVES the Spice Girls. I eat sushi at least 3 times a week, and feel guilty about how much it costs the other 4 days a week. I love designer jeans and cheap accessories. I don't like sweets, but I love the UCLA Bruins!
Yay! Ms. Penguin sporting the reefs in Italia! Best. flip-flops. EVER.
His easy-going personality is the perfect complement to the overzealous drama queen in me, so we’ve managed to work out any obstacle we’ve encountered so far. We have yet to travel outside of the country together, so we’ll see … !!