adventuring together since 2015

--- Monday August 24, 2015 Room 108 Forum Building, Penn State --- It was a Monday afternoon at the start of the fall semester at Penn State. With all of the nerves that come with the first day of college, Mandi had convinced herself she was having an allergic reaction to the dining hall food. But being the diligent student she is, she decided to attend Chem 100 anyway—missing the first day of classes is a sentence worse than death, after all. Kim was seated in the clamoring Forum lecture hall, waiting to see who would join her in the front row for class. To her surprise, a frantic young woman plopped down in the seat next to her and blurted out, “Hi! Excuse me, do you know how to use an epi-pen?” Kim spent most of the first Chemistry lesson nervously eyeing the girl seated next to her for signs of impending death, but thankfully it was a false alarm. While she did not end up having to save Mandi’s life that afternoon, that day was the start of a great new friendship.

Mandi and Kim spent the next two semesters sitting together in Chemistry, along with their new friend Nelson. Through study sessions, lunches, Penn State White Out football games, and an incredible 4 hour long Bruce Springsteen concert, the two quickly became good friends over the first 2 years of college. For junior year, Kim, Mandi and her good friend Ashley moved in together into Highland Tower in downtown State College. They had many adventures in Highland Tower, including but not limited to: losing lots of sleep after the Weekly Criminal Minds night with Nikki, putting up a Christmas tree in December of Junior year and leaving it up until graduation, and fighting a bat infestation inside the kitchen.

For the summer between junior and senior year, Kim had lined up an internship north of Baltimore, and Mandi in Northern Virginia. They severely underestimated the traffic in the DC area and decided to live together that summer in Silver Spring, Maryland while they interned. They had a whirlwind summer of loud concerts, the hottest day on planet earth touring Washington DC, getting caught in the pouring rain on a hike, going to the movies, playing tennis and visiting with friends. That summer, during the rare hours when they were not sitting in a cubicle or in crawling traffic, they got a glimpse of what their future together would look like. From fun and exciting adventures to the simple routines of preparing dinner and watching Jeopardy each night, Kim and Mandi found home in each other. On August 4th, their time in Maryland was up. Before returning back to Pennsylvania to get ready for senior year, Kim and Mandi decided to make it official!