Serena and I met all the way back in 2012. We were both in the UCDC program, where students from University of California campuses could intern in Washington DC for a semester of school credit (I joined the program from UCSD, and Serena joined from UCLA). As fate would have it, Serena and I were neighbors in the university housing for the program. A friend of mine in the program hit it off with Serena so well that she brought Serena with her to a gathering at my dorm apartment on one of our first nights in DC. She said to Serena, "You're going to love Stern." Fortunately, that prediction (eventually) came true.

That night, as our group walked around looking for DC nightlife, I was able to talk with Serena quite a bit. I could immediately tell she was incredibly intelligent, yet she still laughed at all of my jokes. We immediately seemed to have chemistry, which made it all the more disappointing when after a couple hours of conversation, she informed me that she already had a boyfriend. I resigned myself to the fact that we would be just friends, and we continued to talk throughout the night. (The next day I verified with my friend that Serena did, in fact, have a boyfriend, and wasn't just trying to politely reject me)

As Serena and I were neighbors, we still saw each other a lot in DC. We developed a solid friendship - going in groups to the White House, monuments, museums, and events like the Ben's Chili Bowl World Chili Eating Championship. We kept in touch even after leaving DC - occasionally messaging each other late at night when everyone else was offline as we both worked on papers we shouldn't have procrastinated on. Eventually Serena broke up with the boyfriend she had in DC, but we remained just friends as neither of us felt compelled to drive all the way from SD to LA or vice versa to meet up.

After college, we both did our own thing for a while - I moved up to the Los Angeles area for work, and Serena became an English teacher overseas with Teach for China. Then, on one day in early February 2015, Serena posted on Facebook that she was back in LA for a couple weeks. As I lived in LA now, I messaged her and suggested that we hang out that weekend and catch up. For some reason, that plan fell through, and we both quickly agreed to just reschedule for the following weekend. As it turns out, that next Saturday ended up being Valentine's Day - which neither of us realized when we made the plan. Not sure if we were hanging out as friends or if it was a date, I picked up Serena and we walked down to the Redondo Beach Pier around sunset.

When we got hungry, we started walking into some restaurants, and hostesses stared at me in disbelief and disappointment as I informed them I didn't have a reservation...on Valentine's Day. Eventually, one kind person took pity on me, and we finally managed to be seated at the bar in a nice restaurant on the Pier. Conversation was just as easy with Serena as before, and we ended up walking along the beach so far after dinner that we had to take an Uber back to my place. In an effort not to be presumptuous, 22 year old Andrew made another smooth move, and sat in the front seat of the Uber while Serena sat in the back. As I was getting laughed at by the Uber driver, I began to realize that "just friends" don't usually go out to dinner and take long walks on the beach on Valentine's Day. When we got back to my place, I let her know how I felt about her, and fortunately we were on the same page - so we had our first kiss. We stayed in touch almost every day as she went back to China to finish her school year, and when she returned again for good, we started officially dating shortly after.

After a couple years, Serena got into a PhD program at UC Berkeley. Since she had to take that opportunity and my career was down in LA, we dated long distance for years, seeing each other during the summer and occasional weekend trips to Northern or Southern California (We banked up lots of Southwest miles). After that long distance and a pandemic, we were happy to finally get to move in together in late 2021. A couple years later, on our 8th anniversary, we walked down to Redondo Beach Pier once again, and this time I knew what I was doing. We sat down on a bench overlooking the ocean, and I asked her to marry me. She said yes! (Picture above) We celebrated by having dinner at the same restaurant we did all those years ago - this time sitting at a table, not the bar.

We're both excited to share our next chapter with you all on October 26th!