As a nostalgic and a romantic, I love thinking about all the little decisions and happenstances that lead to great things. For Quinn and me, so many pieces had to come together perfectly for us to find each other in Berlin.

For example, he was one of only five students in his high school class to choose to take advanced German, prompting his interest in studying abroad in Berlin. I was seriously considering a program in Perugia, Italy, but when my parents learned that an earthquake had struck the region the previous year, that option was off the table.

After we arrived in Berlin for our semester abroad in August 2017, Quinn made some new friends in the lobby of the student housing complex. I struck up a conversation with some girls at the bus stop on the way to campus. Through these serendipitous introductions, we found our way to the same circle of friends. And on September 28, 2017, Quinn sat down next to me in the cafeteria, and we had our first conversation.

During our program-led travel week in early October, we visited Amsterdam, Utrecht, den Haag, and Brussels. Quinn and I spent the week exploring, sightseeing, and getting to know each other as friends. It was very clear very quickly that Quinn was a kind, attentive, thoughtful, and selfless guy, and it only took a couple of days of knowing him for me to start seeking him out, trying to sit next to him and talk to him every chance I got.

At the end of our travel week, once we were back in Berlin, Quinn and I went out for ice cream cones, and that was that. Within a few weeks, I was inviting him to my brother's wedding (my brother, who was not yet engaged.) Needless to say, we both knew that we'd found something special that was going to last a lot longer than our semester abroad.

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