We met through a social media app called Yik Yak which was widely used amongst college students. Yik Yak allowed its users to create and view discussion threads within a 5-mile radius. At the time, I was living in Fresh Meadows while attending Baruch College and Shao was living in the Lower East Side while attending Stony Brook University. With this app, you're able to post in two locations - where you live and where you attend college. One night, I posted in the Baruch College area asking, "I'm bored. Who wants to FaceTime or talk?" and funny enough, Shao was home during that week from college and saw my post appear on his thread. He responded saying something witty and we exchanged our Kik messenger information. From there, we started chatting. I didn't see anything of it - just two people bored and wanting to chat. Eventually, after some time speaking, we agreed on meeting on Christmas day since I'm Jewish and don't celebrate and his family doesn't celebrate either. On this day, we met in the city at the Apple store to get my moms laptop fixed. Later that night, he took me out for dinner where we spoke about religion, which was absolutely crazy given it's our first face-to-face meeting!

The proposal was definitely a memorable one. During our time dating, I've expressed to Shao how important it is to me that all of our close family and friends knew he was going to propose. Fast forward a few years later, our four year anniversary was slowly approaching. For this year, the start of Hanukkah fell on the same week as our anniversary date so I decided host a Hanukkah party to celebrate our anniversary and the holiday together with loved ones. It's also very important to Shao and I that we merge our cultures as much as possible so we've decided to hosted a kosher hot-pot at our apartment with cute little Hanukkah decorations. Little did I know that Shao was using this opportunity to propose since it had all of the elements we love - great food, great company, and our first home together.