Our Love Story

How We Met

Kyle and I met for the first time on July 15, 2014 - his 22nd birthday. We had just arrived in Kunming for our Teach For China fellowship and were gathered with a big group of other teachers at the Kunming Northwest Regional Bus Terminal waiting for our bus to the training site. I thought Kyle was very tan and cute but he said the word hella a lot so I kind of tuned him out.

Fast forward to April 2015 at a Professional Development Conference in Baoshan → we have been working at our schools which are on opposite sides of the province but reconnect on the sweaty dance floor of Club Mook after the conference. Kyle offers to walk me back to my hotel room later that night and confesses a months old crush.

The rest is history~~~we spend the rest of our time in China taking overnight busses across the Gaoligongshan mountain range every weekend just to hold hands and eat KFC together. When we decide to come back to the US, Kyle comes to LA with me and stays with me through grad school. And when I decide to take a job in San Francisco, we decide to lock it in.

Our Engagement

A month before our move to San Francisco from Los Angeles, I took Maggie on a surprise weekend trip to Idyllwild, a quiet mountain town near Palm Springs that intersects with the Pacific Crest Trail. After checking into our cabin, I suggested we go for a walk and enjoy the sunset before dinner. The sun was setting pretty quickly so I didn't have a ton of time, but I found the perfect spot atop a flat rock, surrounded by manzanita scrub and pine trees with a view of the nearby mountains.

I was pretty nervous by this point! I kneeled, but Maggie was sitting on the rock, so I had to ask her to stand up. I pulled out the ring, whispered my profession of love to her (which was probably entirely nonsensical), and asked her to marry me. She said yes! And cried a lot haha. We then kissed a lot, and then enjoyed our first sunset together as an engaged couple.