Mike - I was in my kitchen, exchanging first texts with a pretty woman from Brazil, and I asked "Are you real?". She decided to prove it, and she videochatted me. Holy smokes! A woman from Brazil is calling! Ok, I'll bite -- and I answered. There she was, flesh and bone. She spoke Portuguese, and I spoke English, but that wasn't really a problem. I fumbled with my high school Spanish, which is really not Portuguese. We laughed, we smiled, and we made faces. Our chemistry was huge. "I think I fell in love", she wrote. You and me both. We texted on into the night, slept, and started again the next day. She opened her life to me. She sent pictures of everything -- family, friends, her work, her city. Following her lead, I did the same. She went on trips around her city to show me what it was like. We videochatted often, at least once a day. She took me, via video, to parties with her friends. I took her on hikes around Los Alamos. We were in contact all the time, and I became acutely aware of exactly what time it was in Brazil, three hours ahead of me. We started learning languages, but we also made heavy use of online translators. Sometimes we had to explain things many times, but we are both very patient. I drew on every snippet of English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin that I knew. She started taking English classes. We had deep conversations about everything, despite the language barrier. I told her I liked her hair a certain way, and she had it done to surprise me. I surprised her with roses on Dia dos Namorados (similar to Valentine's Day), less than a month after we first talked. We exchanged silver promise rings and wore them. We made plans to meet, but there were obstacles. Step by step, paso a paso, we told each other as we worked out the details together.