We met through mutual friends on a night out in downtown San Jose. This was before Tinder. Initially, I had no interest in Raymond. However, there was an individual in the group who got rather drunk and tried to drive home at the end of the night. Raymond hardly knew this guy, but I witnessed him step in, calm him down and convince all of us to go back to his apartment to hang out.That was where we were able to take his keys from him and make sure he was safe. Raymond's behavior really captured me, and it's this caring and selfless quality that many of you know him by as well. I waited all night for him to ask me for my number. He didn't, but a girl at the party did get his number. The next day, I asked the girl for his number, called him during my lunch break and left a voicemail asking him to dinner. I couldn't explain how compelled I was to call, I just knew he had made an impression. He called me back and we had a date the following days. Needless to say, it was a lovely date. I felt like I had known him for years. I think our first date lasted 7 hours; it felt seamless.

We had a mishap with our DSLR early on in our Iceland trip, and somehow the lens were broken in the new case we got. We were understandably upset as our nice camera was rendered useless in the midst of such beautiful scenery. We still managed to take some nice photos using Raymond’s iPhone on the tripod with our bluetooth selfie stick as the remote. We were leaving our Airbnb in Skaftafell National Park. We had already been to the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon* *2 days prior, but it was absolutely beautiful out with clear skies. We were driving west to Selfoss(near Reykjavik) and planned to make another stop in the glacier lagoon to take a photo in our matching snow bib overalls. We found a good spot and set up our tripod. We took off out parkas and took a couple photos displaying out matching coveralls. I was freezing, so when I thought we were done I attempted to run out of frame to grab my parka, but Raymond stopped me and said “One more.” He proceeded to get on his knee and asked me to marry him. Then I understood why he was particularly emotional over the broken lens; he just wanted the photo to be perfect. And it still was.