So at the very end of September we started dating. The first few months were interesting. We bonded really fast. At the time another guy was hanging around with me and my friends whose girlfriend was doing a study abroad in Ireland. While she was having the time of her life over in Galway, he was going a bit stir crazy. And he was quite the ladies man, so he started spending time with not only my girlfriend but with my other friends' girlfriends as well. And it's not that we didn't trust the girls, but we knew he had a reputation. So my friends and I confronted him, and things got ugly. He was upset, we were upset, the girls were upset/freaked out. But in the end it made things better for me and my fiance. I knew that I could trust her.

Also, the first few months we were together she was student teaching, which meant she was getting up really early and spending a lot of time working at night. I, on the other hand, was thoroughly taking advantage of being a senior and taking mostly light classes that required nothing more than me showing up most of the time to get decent grades. So our time together was somewhat limited.

In early December we went on a retreat sponsored by our college's office of campus ministry. Things weren't going great heading into that weekend, and both of us were questioning if we would last. But that weekend changed things. We got a lot closer and started to understand one another better. It didn't hurt that where we went for retreat was in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. The Northeast Kingdom is such a sparesely populated place that you can really be alone with your thoughts and not be distracted or disturbed as you walk along a starlit road.

Anyhow, as we headed into Christmas break, things were going very well.