Achi news desk-
He decided to spend Christmas somewhere that would not involve the disasters of blizzards. She was spending the holidays with her family, traveling for the first time outside her home country of Venezuela.
The two didn’t expect to meet someone special the night they crossed paths in a bar in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.
Describing himself as an independent person who had lived and traveled to many places, Doug Schneider, who was 36 years old at the time, decided to travel alone to the Caribbean country in 2000. He swore he would not suffer another nasty snow storm, which he experienced during the previous Christmas with his family on Vancouver Island. Isabel Barroeta, a 26-year-old university student from Venezuela at the time, was on vacation at a resort for two weeks. She said her grandparents had invited her to join them on the trip with her uncle and his family.
“I was telling my mom how I’m going to go away for Christmas without you,” Barroeta said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca. “And she’s like, go, I’ll be here when you come back in January.”
Schneider and Barroeta stayed at different hotels but ended up one night at Crazy Moon, a bar in a shopping mall in the middle of a complex with nine resorts.
After some hesitation, Barroeta decided to join some Canadian women who invited him there that night.
“I was like ‘but I don’t really know these people’ and my family is like, ‘Just go ahead. We’re on holiday. We’re so close. If something goes wrong or if you see something funny, just come back.'”
At first, the girls – including Barroeta – were attracted to Schneider’s companion, another solo Canadian traveler he was hanging out with at the bar.
“The interesting thing is that he is a very good looking guy. All the girls swooned over him and everyone was very interested to talk to him in front of me,” said Schneider in a video interview with CTVNews. approx. “I don’t know, whatever he would say, within 30 seconds, any woman who was talking to him would leave and then they would talk to me.”
The trip brought Isabel Barroeta and Doug Schneider together. (Isabel Barroeta)
Isabel Barroeta and Doug Schneider hit it off despite language barriers. (Isabel Barroeta)
The first time they met
Barroeta admitted that blond men weren’t exactly her type, but Schneider’s blue eyes stood out.
“To be honest, the blue in his eyes is very beautiful, but the yellow I was like, I don’t like, but it was attractive,” he said.
Barroeta remembered the moment he met Schneider for the first time. He offered her a chair to sit on and she finally admitted that she didn’t speak much English. He also didn’t understand any Spanish.
Canadian women soon introduced him to her. That’s when the “magic” began, says Barroeta.
“Canadian women on vacation aren’t really interested in meeting a Canadian man so they were pretty quick to write me off,” says Schneider.
Schneider and Barroeta recalled that the Latin dance music was loud and the place was packed, so they ended up going outside the bar.
“The cultural barriers were not as big as the communication barriers at the beginning,” he said.
It was hard to understand what they were trying to say, Schneider and Barroeta admitted, but they soon hit it off, talking for hours until three in the morning.
They arranged to meet again on the beach the next day.
Barroeta was more than an hour late. “But let’s face it. I met this guy in a bar. I don’t know who he is. What if I go to the beach and he wasn’t there?” she said. “At least I wouldn’t look so foolish.”
She found him waiting for her.
They said they spent the next three days hanging out, going for long quiet walks on the beach, eating dinner with her family and celebrating Christmas.
“When I saw how she interacted with her family … I said, ‘Oh, this is a very nice girl,'” Schneider said.
As language was a barrier, they communicated at times by taking pictures on the sand while walking along the beach.
“When I can’t express myself properly, then I draw pictures on the sand and then it will be,” he said.
It was more of a communication challenge than love at first sight, the couple said.
“It was a little confusing to be perfectly honest because … she couldn’t express herself clearly as to whether or not she was interested in talking to me,” Schneider said.
When they first exchanged emails and phone numbers before he left, Barroeta said she wrote him a note that read, “I’ll forget you,” mistakenly forgetting a crucial word.
He thought what she wrote might be literally true and asked if that was what she meant. Fortunately, he caught the mistake in time and they both laughed about it.
Isabel Barroeta and Doug Schneider kept in touch after meeting in the Dominican Republic in 2000. (Isabel Barroeta)
Isabel Barroeta and Doug Schneider spent Christmas 2000 in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. (Isabel Barroeta)
Keep in touch
Barroeta returned to her hometown of Barquisimeto, 400 kilometers west of Caracas, on January 3, 2001. That night, she said the phone rang. “It was him,” she said. “He was checking to see if I arrived safely.”
As soon as she was back home, she grabbed her books and dictionary to improve her English. “And every time we talk on the phone, I had little notes and my dictionary with me.”
Schneider said he traveled to Venezuela four times that year, staying about a week each time. He even got stuck there for four extra days because of the September 11 attacks in the United States
The following year, he visited Canada for six weeks. They both celebrated their birthdays, which are only two days apart. Just before she left, about a year and a half after they met, he proposed and she said yes.
“It was a long-distance relationship but it worked and then we got married in Venezuela,” Schneider said, noting that they kept in touch regularly via email, phone, text messages and video calls.
When they married in a Catholic church on December 6, 2002, the country was living through a turbulent political period. In an attempt to overthrow the government of Hugo Chávez, the opposition started a national strike and disrupted commercial activity in the country. Many middle-class residents opposed Chávez’s governing style while he had strong support among the poor, CNN reported on December 24, 2002.
The ceremony didn’t go smoothly either. Barroeta said the Catholic priest who knew English did not appear so they had to scramble to find another in a few hours. However, the priest who replaced him did not speak English so her cousin had to translate what he said during the ceremony.
For their honeymoon, they went to Margarita Island, a popular holiday destination off Venezuela, with his Canadian in-laws.
Isabel Barroeta and Doug Schneider married during a politically turbulent time in Venezuela in 2002. (Isabel Barroeta)
Isabel Barroeta and Doug Schneider were married in Venezuela on December. 6, 2002. (Isabel Barroeta)
A new life in Canada
As Schneider and his family flew back to Canada, she said she waited eight months for her application for permanent residency to be approved. He moved to Canada in August 2003.
Knowing how harsh Canadian winters can be, Schneider said he makes sure she has winter boots and a jacket suitable for -35 C weather. “If you don’t dress appropriately for Canada, you you’re going to hate it,” he said. “So I bought the best winter gear for her to go into the winter because that’s a big deal.”
Barroeta soon attended a free English school for newcomers, learning the language every day.
Since moving to Ottawa, they have had two sons, aged 18 and 13. They have also traveled together to more than a dozen countries, including returning to the Dominican Republic almost every year since they first met.
“Maybe it was even fate, you know. We were in the right place at the right time. It was just meant to be,” said Barroeta.
“Twenty-three years later here we are, we managed to establish a beautiful marriage and we have a beautiful family with two wonderful children and we are happy,” he said. “So it is possible … to meet the right person for you.”
