Ciao amore mio! Ci vediamo in Seoul.
March 2006 - Meeting, Renewing, Longing
The days were growing long since my love came to visit me in Seoul. 
We saw our unlikely meeting on the Rome-Perugia train with considerable longing in each other's eyes. Tears well up inside my mind. Should we act quickly to quench our needs or can we wait and test our feelings for each other. It'll just be until July when we have enough money saved or maybe next March when my contract ends. I need to study Korean. I need to develop my journalistic writing skills and assist the resistance movements. But I also need her company.
With the popular world in view, time is short and ancient imperialism is finally catching up to the people's movements and modernizing its face. But on the opposite side of the same coin, time may also be short for love. This relationship is meant to take us somewhere.
May 2006 - Man visits woman
The decision was made for me to lie to my boss and skip town at 5am one morning on a plane bound for Beijing, China after having my visa processed by the Chinese embassy in Seoul without my boss knowing where I was that made me late for work twice in two weeks. There was a bit of finagling that had to be done since there was a holiday in between drop-off and pick-up and most visa processing was delayed by two or three days. It was nothing a few extra 5am mornings wouldn't fix. You'd be surprised to learn what being first in line can solve. I picked up the visa on Friday and left on Sunday.
From there I would enjoy an afternoon of spring air and make another long voyage to Rome where I would meet my unlikely partner Leonardo DaVinci airport. We would then make the 2 hour ride to Perugia and begin living together in an old stone-built apartment set in the stradine of old town Perugia.
Just like that, a new world was opened up to both of us. I accepted the new arrangements while she took a more reserved approach. I was simply happy to be around her. But out of work in the town of 100,000 Perugini was not a prospect that either of us were too happy about. Part-time teaching it would be while she worked full tilt and prepared for graduation.
September 2006 - Marriage it is!
After a thousand ups and downs we decided to get married. Italy and China require untold bureaucracy to bring foreigners together in the imperial ceremony, but the U.S. authorities asked us to come on down tomorrow morning where they would fix us up real nice. We made an impromptu trip to the U.S. and after giving all the invites out a week in advance went to the courthouse on September eight.
It was a great day. We said our vows and didn't look back. The celebration two days later at my parents' house was homely, short and to the point. We shared it with our closest family and friends, though many couldn't make it due to the timing.
November 2006 - Ciao Perugia, Ciao Umbria
We decided with much consideration for both of our situations in mind to move to China and really begin our lives together instead of living in the college town in rooms built for lonely students. Up until the day we left we were confronted with the problem of her boss not accepting our decision and demanding that she stay by threat of firing. He gave-in in the end and we moved like the lightning bolts we've become and flew with all of our things to the Chinese capital.
March 2007 - Burning coal
In the space of one blog, I have summarized what should have been four.
We have been moving nonstop. We just got back from a trip back home for my dad's 60th birthday. It was valuable experience for two people who constantly live inside themselves and rarely get to experience the social world. It showed us that to keep us from ending up like all the other couples you need to constantly live with a network of people who can act as your mirrors in order to test out your interpersonal judgments that might be too harsh if directly relayed. We are back and still have no concept of what we have actually been through the last 14 months. The only ways to relive those 14 months are through each others eyes in a vicarious, wishful way or through storytelling to others. Or through space between.
I don't know what we have done. There was no thought involved. It has made us both better people and we can only fight to make it last.
Now we know that these things do happen to people. It may seem like a dream while it's playing itself out, but after some time goes by, the reality of the people and the circumstances pulse through your helpless will making it stronger and making the world seem that much smaller.
