It all started with "have a nice life"...

Going into The University of St. Thomas, studying abroad never crossed my mind. That changed freshman year when everyone around me seemed to be doing it. I didn't want to do a full semester because I was graduating a year early, which meant I was already missing time being on the swim team. A summer program was perfect. Needing to fulfill my upper level theology requirement left me with few options. I narrowed it down to Greece or Scotland. I've always wanted to travel to Greece and going to Scotland had never been high on my list. To this day, I cannot tell you why I chose Scotland. It must have been fate. On the first day of our program, we had a party in a castle and it was there that Ryan and I met. We quickly found a group of friends that we spent the rest of our time together with. Ryan and I grew closer as the trip went on, spending lots of time together, even taking trip to London with only the two of us. I had to leave before Ryan and on the morning I left, he woke up early to say goodbye to me. When he touched my shoulder and said "Have a nice life," I knew I would never see him again. I later found out that he almost didn't get up to say goodbye because he was certain he wouldn't see me again either. After getting back to the US, however, we continued to talk everyday. We joked about a future together and made plans for me to visit him at Ole Miss for a football game. As time went on and we got closer, the jokes became less funny and more serious. After a few more trips to Oxford, MS and finally getting Ryan to Minnesota in the middle of January (ask him about driving on a lake for the first time), we finally made things official. Plans of moving to Chicago became a reality when Ryan graduated. Moving to a new city for a boy seemed a little crazy, but moving in together after never living in the same city was even crazier. Three years, a dog, and an engagement ring later and I wouldn't change a thing.

When I first got to college, I knew for a fact that studying abroad was something that I was going to do. Toward the end of my sophomore year, I found a summer program in Scotland that was perfect. It wouldn't interfere with football season in the fall and it wouldn't force me to miss out on Oxford, Mississippi in the spring. On my first day in Scotland, I quickly found a core group of people that I ended up spending most of my time hanging out with. In that group of people was Sara. When we first met, I immediately thought she was way out of my league (which was a fair thought because my luggage had been lost, I hadn't showered, and was literally wearing the zip-off pants I flew in). One day we went out to lunch, just the two of us. We were both getting ready to go into our junior year, so I asked her what her plans were for after college. She said that she had given some thought about moving to a city like Chicago. That was something I wanted to do too so I made the joke "Oh, well what if we just got married and then we lived in Chicago!" The summer term went on and Sara and I still hung out. She left after 4 weeks and on her last day, I was completely convinced I was never going to see her again. I almost didn't even get out of bed to say goodbye. But I did. After we hugged goodbye, I hit her with the classic "Have a nice life" and I went back to bed. But after she left, we ended up keeping in touch - literally texting each other every day. As we both finished up our college careers, the joke about us moving to Chicago together turned into less of a "haha, what if?" and into more of an "oh my God, are we actually doing this?" I moved to Chicago in January of 2017 and then Sara joined me here about 5 months later and we never looked back. After over 2 years of being roommates, 2 different apartments, and 1 dog, it was official. I wanted Sara to have a nice life, but I wanted to spend the rest of it with her.