Notes

His story: It was late in October 2012. Had just started graduate school. Harvard had arranged a bus trip to Mass general hospital to advertise the research labs there. As I gathered with the crowd that was on its way of getting on the bus, this girl caught my eye. She had brown eyes, wavy hair and spoke with an obvious Eastern European accent. Her name was too long to read from a quick glance (that all I could afford as a decent man) from her name tag placed quite precariously on her chest! There was something about her, an aura maybe, that drew me...
Worked up the courage to ask her name and where she came from (her accent told me that she was not from there). When she answered, I couldn't get anything! Her country was a place I didn't know existed... And her name was too foreign and said in too much of an accent for me to understand. I projected confidence... Told her, of course, I knew her country and started a conversation about graduate school...

Fast forward a few weeks. By this time, I realized that Gergana (I did find out her name from the Harvard but website) was living in the same dorm as me. By now we had met a few more times and in fact, we were meeting up almost every week to solve problem sets together with a couple of other friends. At every one of these meetings, I realized that something about this girl enticed me. Perhaps it was her soft nature, or her smarts when it came to talking science, or a subtle shyness (which she tried to hide) or simply her refreshing ability to have an insightful conversation about anything in the world around us.

A few more months go by. We start meeting up quite often (a couple of times every week) for dinner. We even start going out for long walks in the parks while jibbering about everything and anything that we can think of, anywhere from politics to how fast turtles move! Of course, by now I had realized that both of us were single... And speaking for myself, I was ready to mingle! On one our walks, I mustered up the courage and tried to put my arm around her and she immediately sprang away... Too soon to take that step... I realized!

A few more months go by, Gergana and I are very (very) good friends by now. We go out for walks and even go out for dinner at restaurants (I dare not call these as dates). I find her to be an amazing friend. We never run dry of topics to talk about. She seems to be a perfect prospect for a girlfriend, but I still couldn't be sure whether she was interested. I had made a few advances (like even talking about how she feels about relationships) and at every attempt, she seemed to push back. I tried not to rock the boat too much. But a few weeks later something amazing happened.

On our way back from one of our dinner outs, she popped a question out of the blue. "Are we dating?".... At that point, my heart leaped with joy and that that's how it started!