Map of the Heart

Katie North ’17 and Joaquín Loustau ’16, an international couple, have made world travels a centerpiece of their marriage.

Mary Katherine “Katie” North ’17 has 43 unique stamps on her passport. Her husband, Joaquín Loustau ’16, is slightly ahead, with a country count of 54. 

As a couple, their globetrotting covers 27 nations — many added just last year. The newlyweds spent all of 2023 traversing Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

“We just got back in December,” Katie says, smiling brightly.

It was the fulfillment of a decade-long dream, started early in their relationship. 

“We first had that conversation in my sophomore year,” Joaquín recalls.

From the moment they met in the first weeks of Katie’s freshman year, the paths of these peripatetic LMU students kept crossing. Joaquín was her group leader at a Campus Ministry retreat in fall 2012. She remembers buttonholing the charming Uruguayan, eager to deploy her fluent Spanish. He remembers trying to impress the freshman from San Diego with the sophistication that comes with sophomore standing. 

Katie and Joaquín bumped into each other all over campus. In the Honors Lounge. At the Campus Ministry. On the soccer field playing for the same intramural team. And at the year’s first De Colores weekend, building out a home for a destitute family in Tijuana.

Sparks flew amid the sawdust. By November, Joaquín happily accepted Katie’s invitation to join the sprawling North clan around their Thanksgiving table. By December, she was telling friends he might be “the one,” despite their coming from very different worlds.

Joaquín had grown up in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital. An only child raised by secular parents, he’d independently discovered and embraced Catholicism in Jesuit high school. Meanwhile Katie is a third-generation Lion from a committed Catholic family with one foot firmly planted in Mexico. Her dad crosses the border daily to run his business in Baja California.  

Their scholarly interests were also worlds apart: Joaquín was earning dual degrees in computer science and theology; Katie majored in Spanish while pursuing pre-nursing courses and a certified nurse assistant credential. 

Yet they had much in common. Academic standouts, Joaquín and Katie both graduated magna cum laude. They shared a passion for communal work. At Commencement, they were recognized, respectively, with the Ignatian Award and the Marian Award.

And they both possessed a powerful wanderlust. Service missions took Katie to Rwanda, Thailand, Argentina, and Nicaragua. Joaquin’s college experiences saw him in Jamaica, Brazil, Spain, and El Salvador. 

They got engaged in 2018. He proposed on a bouldering trip to Joshua Tree, dropping to one knee after the day’s last climb. At the time, Katie was working on a master’s degree in nursing at the University of San Diego. Joaquín was working at Vistage, the international CEO coaching organization where he’s been a software engineer for the last eight years.

Soon after starting her career as an RN at Sharp Memorial Hospital, Katie found herself at the frontline of a global health crisis, caring for infectious disease patients on the COVID-19 wards. 

The lockdowns slammed the brakes on their nuptials. After three postponements, they finally had the blowout wedding of their dreams in the summer of 2022. And six months later, they packed their suitcases for the long-anticipated world tour. 

They made their way down from Costa Rica to Patagonia, by way of Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Brazil. Lingering at each destination, they observed and savored local ways. Ash Wednesday in Ecuador, a papal mass in Lisbon, Buddhist temples in Vietnam. In May, they crossed the pond, concentrating on Spain and Portugal. Katie longed to walk the Camino de Santiago. Joaquín had already made that pilgrimage, so while Katie trekked the 477-mile French Way, he rambled across Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo, Morocco, and Turkey.   

They closed their world tour with four months in Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. 

It wasn’t nearly enough, says Joaquín. He’s already eyeing maps of Africa and Scandinavia for their next journey.

“I could see us traveling with kids,” adds Katie, who plans to have at least four. “I always love to see parents on hikes, each with a child on their back. I could see that being a big part of our life.”

Diane Krieger is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in publications at Tufts University, Johns Hopkins University, Caltech and The Idaho Statesman, where she was the resident philharmonic and theater critic. Krieger’s story titled “China’s Migrant Mothers” appeared at the LMU Magazine website in October 2024.