Spicy!

As facebook or my mom has already told you, Henry and I got engaged a few months ago. It was a fabulous experience, and exceeded anything I could have dreamed up. Also, I was surprised, and I didn't expect to be surprised.

It started as most morning do, heading into the bathroom in the morning to brush my teeth. Henry was supposed to leave that day for a conference in LA, or so I thought. This morning, however, there was a card sitting on the sink faucet. I opened it up, and in it Henry invited me to join him on his trip, leaving in 2 days!!! Yikes! This meant that I spent the day getting things arranged to be gone for a week, moving appointments, and crossing my fingers that nothing would come up. I also thought this meant I would definitely be going to Disney Land.

That evening I was attending an end of the year celebration with students and faculty. Joy, a Seattle friend, and I were driving around when I got further news from Henry suggesting that I go find my next "clue", hidden behind a picture of us in my condo. We picked up my labmate, Jeremy, who was also heading to the party with us, who then became an unwitting participant in the scavenger hunt excitement. Joy was convinced that Henry was going to be hiding in my condo, but I was pretty sure he had actually gotten on a plane that day. After I gave the "all clear" to Joy and Jeremy that Henry was not, in fact, lurking in my condo, we found this:

I quickly grabbed the note to discover that it was written in code and I would have to decipher it. By now, we were late for our party so all decryption would have to happen in the car en route. The first few words read "L.A. is just a layover". This set off some intermittent squeals from Joy which would continue the rest of the night. I decoded some more words including "15 hours away". More squeals. In all fairness, she was not the only one squealing. So now I knew LA was not my destination, and it was likely I would be flying 15 hours from LA (although I hadn't ruled out a road trip). This ruled in about every destination outside North America. So. Exciting.

At the party my friends starting making guesses for where I would end up. Henry texted that we would bring back a souvenir for whomever guessed correctly. My best guesses, based on recent conversations, were Dubai, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and Spain. I was thrilled about each of these possibilities. I just had to wait for my next clue.

Later that weekend, I got a call from Henry's brother. He told me that Nancy Drew was working to solve the case in the hidden bookshelf. I immediately knew where to look, in my trusty Nancy collection.

One of these things is not like the other...

New Zealand!

And with that I knew I was headed to New Zealand. Excitement doubled. I had just one day to get check the New Zealand weather report, buy some needed travel essentials, and get packed. Henry and I had committed to reading Under the Dome together in prep for watching the TV show (we are on a Stephen King kick), and he was chapters ahead of me at this point, making this trip the perfect time for me to get caught up and also supplying some needed entertainment for the 15 hour flight (in regular Stephen king fashion, the book is over 1000 pages). Between that and my malaria pills (code for sour patch kids), I was ready to fly. The entire trip including layovers took well over 20 hours.

When I landed in New Zealand the weather was cool (in the 60's) and rainy. Felt just like Seattle. Henry had arranged a car to meet me at the airport, and I was quickly whisked away to the hotel. I checked in, snarfed a Picnic Henry had left for me (Picnic = Australian candy bar), and promptly passed out from jet lag. Henry woke me up and we went to dinner.

The next morning Henry had arranged for us to do a Skywalk - which is to walk around the top of the Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. Again, the weather was gray and rainy, and did not promise much of a view. However, Henry was committed to going and I was committed to going along with Henry.

Sky Tower on a day much sunnier than our Sky Walk.

To go out there, we had to put on orange jumpsuits and take off anything that was loose or could become loose, like hair ties, watches, etc. They even made Henry change his shoes. We got put in harnesses, because the platform you walk on is about 1.5 meters wide and has no railings whatsoever. We did our "sky walk" with a guide, Ethan, and another tourist, Renata. As Ethan was arranging the harnesses, we heard him ask a coworker: who would choose to do this on a day like this?, further validating our rainy sky walk.

Waiting to get harnessed and head up -blissfully ignorant of what was to come.

Ethan had us do several challenges which involved varies of forms of putting your trust in your harness and hanging off the edge. Read: terrifying!

Two crazy convicts hangin' off a tower

Pretty soon into our sky walk, Henry dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him. Because my anxiety about being at that height had diminished my frontal lobe capacity into survival mode only, he definitely caught me by surprise. Although I thought he might have something special planned on this trip, I did not expect it on our sky walk.

Yup!

After enthusiastically accepting, I immediately told Henry to put the ring away. I was SO SCARED I would drop it. Little did I know it was double tethered to Henry's harness, which was then transferred to me. The whole "Henry has to change his shoes because they are to loose" was all a ruse to attach the ring without my knowing. We then had to finish our sky walk. I oscillated between feeling completely ecstatic and completely terrified for the rest of the time.

That afternoon Henry gave a key note speech at an engineering conference, the whole catalyst for this entire trip. I was so proud of him. He included a picture of our engagement from the Sky Walk in his talk, making a bunch of New Zealand engineers the first to hear the news. It was really sweet how the conference attendees congratulated us for the rest of the time.

Fancy pants!

I was so awed by how much planning Henry had done, how well he kept the secret, how many details he had accounted for, and how smoothly he had pulled it off. I found out later he had colluded with my sister, my classmate, and my adviser to make it happen. I was so excited to spend the rest of the week exploring New Zealand with my new fiance!