Jean and Sebastian met in high school, where they both attended the New England Conservatory Preparatory school on Saturdays. Sebastian was there already when Jean showed up after leaving Taiwan at age 15 to study music in Boston. This came about because Jean’s mother wanted to find an international music festival for her to do. She attended a festival during the summer at the Walnut Hill School in Natick, and they asked her to audition for the school. She got into the program and made the life-changing decision to move to Boston. While coming back to Taiwan was always an option, Jean never left Boston and pursued all of her music degrees at NEC which is also Sebastian’s Alma Mater. Through high school and College they had many overlapping friends but their real story together only really began much more recently. In early 2020, Sebastian replied to Jean’s facebook story which read “she survived” (saturday prep school teaching). “Who survived?” he asked”, “me” she said. And the rest is history… Actually they kept chatting online, right during the start of the lockdown. After a few months, in July, they got together for a socially distanced first date outside on a friend’s patio. To this day, the owner of said patio still may or may not know that this encounter ever even happened. Even from six feet apart they could tell they liked each other, so there was a second socially distanced date; this time a picnic on the esplanade where Jean brought her famous shrimp and avocado sandwich. On this scorching date in late July, this seafood delectable didn’t quite survive Jean’s walk across the common and has been the subject of many inside jokes since. During these first few months of the pandemic, Jean and Sebastian had something similar to a “long distance relationship”, due to the social distancing. Jean also went to visit Taiwan, having to fully quarantine first for two weeks before departure and after arrival. Through most of the pandemic, Sebastian and Jean spent their time between her studio apartment down town, and in Jamaica Plain where Sebastian was house sitting until just last year. Last spring, they moved into a new apartment together! But we’ll get to that later on... Rather than to outline their entire story together for you, Sebastian and Jean have opted to give you some snap shots about some of their favorite things and activities together and give you a little window into their life.

And yes, sometimes a combination of the two. They both love animals. Jean probably loves them a bit more, and they like to frequent the nearby pet smart just to visit the kitties and little fancy bear (that’s a real animal). But the three animals they love the most are Rufus, Balti, and Mimi. Mimi is their big fluffy orange tabby cat, and Rufus and Balti are the two big energetic goofy brown Irish Setters who live in Waban. Mimi met the dogs for the first time just recently in fact and got along quite nicely, just ask Balti! This could be in part due to the fact that they are probably quite familiar with each other’s scents. Sebastian and Jean have also had some encounters with much bigger animals! They went horse back riding for the first time together last spring where Jean got to ride an enormous mare named blueberry who ran into a tree bruising Jean’s leg and Sebastian got to ride a smaller stallion named Clyde. This was a big adventure for them both, and even the trainers were surprised at some of the horses behavior. Blueberry seemed to have a lot of leftover lunch to discard, and Clyde nearly tripped downhill, which made Sebastian cry out, suddenly sprang to a trot, and then tried to run away from a wild turkey. Maybe horse back riding isn’t their thing. Another big-animal encounter was when driving back from Connecticut, a black bear ran across the street in front of them and almost crawled into the front door of a pickup truck, right in the center of town! This was the first and only time Sebastian has ever seen a bear in the wild. Then there were some encounters with tiny animals (like fancy bear the rodent at pet smart). There are the little orange salamanders that dart between the fungi also in Connecticut. Jean loves to stop and inspect every mushroom she finds. If they are out driving somewhere in the country, Sebastian will drive extra slow so they can find animals. Even finding a house cat can be exciting when you’re looking for animals. Just last fall, Sebastian took a video of a flock of twenty turkeys! He swore it was thirty, but the evidence suggested twenty was more likely. They’ve also found raccoons in Newton, deer in Lincoln, turkeys in Brookline, and giant turtles and monkeys in Taipei!

Now, there is of course another manner in which they both love animals: food. This time, they both feel equally passionate. Sebastian loves to grill. They’ve grilled many times in Gloucester, and there is a grill on the 6th floor at their apartment building. Sebastian can grill fish, steak, vegetable skewers, and recently Sebastian gutted and cleaned a fish himself for the first time. They also love snacking foods - things like chips, cereal, ice cream (Jean likes to add milk to her ice cream). Sebastian likes crispy chips, and Jean likes them as stale as possible... Sebastian will sometimes sneak (stealthily avoiding his conscious), a bowl of apple cinnamon cheerios at midnight, Jean will opt for the Kinder chocolate hippos. They also always take any leftover food when they go out to eat. They won’t waste food. One time, they had a huge skirt steak at a restaurant when Jean was teaching in upstate New York. But next morning they had to leave their air bnb and did not have many options for how to eat the leftover skirt steak. They brought the cold skirt steak to a dunkin donuts and used it in lieu of the sausage in a sausage egg and cheese sandwich. This was one of Jean’s en-jean-ius inventions. They love a variety of different styles, Korean food, Mexican, and they like cooking and have their own unique cooking styles which makes for nice variety at their home dinner plate. Sebastian can cook chili, beef stroganoff, and shrimp scampi. Jean makes amazing soups and all sorts of inventive dishes, and she loves to cook for Sebastian because he always thinks it is amazing! However, there was one small disappointment for Jean when Sebastian bit off more than he could chew... There is an infamous dish in Taiwan called stinky tofu. Having experience with stinky cheese, Sebastian confidently expressed his willingness to try it. But he was no match for the stinky tofu. Finally, Jean found a food Sebastian cannot tolerate.

Our first movie date was in October 2020, during the time of peak social distancing. We went to a drive-in movie theater showing in a parking lot, and we saw Psycho. We already knew that we both had a tolerance for and appreciation of horror movies, as the first movie we ever watched together was the new (at the time) Joker with Joaqim Phoenix. Since then we have always gravitated towards either the dark and scary, or fantasy genre TV shows like Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, Shadow and Bone and the Golden Compass. Oh and we love shows about animals. Naturally, combination of animals and scary suspense was a hit for us, a show called “something bit me” (not for the faint of heart). Sometimes, they have dabbled in the art of baking. In fact, Jean received a very cool looking baking recipe book this past Christmas. Jean loved the great British Baking Show on Netflix, and attempted to bake a Strawberry Short cake. The flavor was fantastic, but the whole cake came out at an angle similar to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Sebastian has recently been perfecting his pancakes from scratch recipe and made french toast from challah bread. Jean doesn’t like the outdoors but the outdoors love Jean, more specifically the bugs. If you name a bug, Jean is allergic to it and it wants to bite her. However, they do enjoy a good autumn hike when the schedule allows for it. During this past winter they walked along the minute man trail in concord a few times. Sebastian was fascinated with the history, and it is a great place to walk before heading to a local farm stand for some fresh produce. Last year, autumn 2022, they went for what was supposed to be a quick hike. Sebastian found a hike that only took a few hours, but near the top they had a little surprise. There was a completely sheer rock face, not at a steep angle, but just smooth rock for 100 yards, and right next to a cliff. Jean was unafraid and went straight on up while Sebastian dragged behind. They realized going to the top was beginning to be more and more rocky, so they turned around to head down. This was a different story as walking down the rock face was much more treacherous. They made it safely but upon reviewing the hike online realized it was a five star difficulty - short, but not the easy day hike they were looking for. Sometimes these things happen however, like when Sebastian booked the wrong day for himself, Jean, Madeleine and Jennifer to go see Barbie. Oops!

One time they had a different kind of adventure, a virtual adventure... Sebastian is an avid gamer, and these days watches more than he plays so as to not put too much strain on his wrists and hands. But back in 2021, it was a welcome surprise when jean jumped into the World of Warcraft alongside him for a couple of months. After a few days of playing, Jean found herself in a strange land, stuck on some monsters. Sebastian had to traverse mountains and oceans for at least two hours to finally rendezvous, at which point they were both too tired to play any longer. Jean did go on however to fulfill her destiny and became the most powerful warlock in Azeroth. They have some other fun activities together like drawing duels, where someone gives a subject, and the other one has to draw it. Jean likes puzzles, Sebastian likes boardgames. After Sebastian asked Jean to play his boardgame “Dragon Soul” multiple times, she invented a new rule where she can play the “never card”, meaning she never has to play the game again. They both like to watch reviews roasting a show they didn’t like...and then of course there is music. Well, music is also work, and they both do it professionally so that is naturally quite an interesting subject. But at heart, they both are genuinely passionate about music and can (sometimes) enjoy playing together. Jean helped Sebastian pull together the musicians for his cello concerto, and Sebastian will come down and drive Jean to her performances in Cape Cod. They both can teach privately from home, thankfully neighbors haven’t complained, yet.

Fast forward a pandemic later, and on March 2nd 2023, Sebastian proposed to Jean. If that date is familiar to some of you, it is because he used his own birthday to disguise his potentially odd behavior leading up to the proposal. “Let’s go see the geese, I really want to see the geese on my birthday” was his excuse to lead Jean onto the Arthur Fielder footbridge where he hatched his plan. After making sure no one was behind him to rectify his error, he dropped his scarf and walked back to pick it up. He stooped down and exclaimed “what’s this?” Jean came back to see, but it was too late. Sebastian was on one knee and popped the question. Afraid the ring might fall onto the highway below them, he closed the lid of the box before she had a chance to answer. We may never know what she intended to say, but her expression seemed to say it all. At the time of writing this, the final chapter in the snapshot in time of our story comes when we went to Taiwan together for the first time. We ate so much food, Sebastian learned a few little phrases in Chinese, and of course met Jean‘s parents and family who showed him the country and welcomed him with open arms. We ate lots of delicious fruit and saw lots of fun things like Taipei 101, the night markets, mountainside lunch visit, and a fishing town at the northern tip of the island, the magnificent concert halls in the south, a road trip, a high-speed rail, a visit to grandmas house, a family gathering, lots of lunches and home cooking, shopping spree’s, doctor visits, monkeys by the swan boats, every day was full of adventure. These were not just tourist-like adventures (some were), but adventures of the real-life kind. The kind of real life that will keep with us for many years to come. Now that we’re both back in Boston, we await the next event, our wedding! We are so grateful and fortunate to have as many family members and friends here as possible, every second we have on this earth is precious together, and we are blessed to spend it with you.