"The very first time I met my wife, it was in Oxford over Thanksgiving break. My best friend spent a semester of undergrad abroad at Oxford and became friends with her; when I visited my friend over break, I was introduced to the woman who is now my wife. It was informal, and in passing -- she didn't even remember that it happened. At the time, it seemed to be an inconsequential meeting. Six years later, we were reconnected by the mutual friend, as I was spending the summer in Europe. She and I went to dinner and attended a concert. Two weeks later, the day before I flew back to the States, she and I took a walk along the Thames, in the neighborhood we now live in.

"We stayed in touch via Skype and email. We were only able to visit occasionally over the next few months. We reached a point when we decided we either needed to spend less time communicating, or meet each other in person and discuss the matter ourselves. When we did meet face-to-face, we decided to try to make our relationship work.

"After all this time communicating across the ocean, I flew to the UK and proposed to her while we were taking a walk in Oxford, the very place we met originally. We were married in the States; we now live in the UK. And the very first place we lived together was in Conway Hall, Notre Dame's London dorm. Now, I live with my wife and twin boys in Conway as the rector of the building.

"We'll be the first to tell you that it's not easy. It's not easy to have relatives and friends who live in a different country; it's not easy to maintain a relationship over time when it's not face-to-face. But you learn from it. You grow from it.

"I'm not much of a risk-taker, so I suppose you could say this was the greatest risk I ever took...but to me, it didn't feel like a risk at all."

           "What is a pet peeve of yours?"
"Easy: when people recite London's area code as 0207. It's 020, take a breath, and the next set of numbers starts with a 7. That's how they're divided. When someone divides them differently, it's especially difficult for me to remember due to my dyslexia."
           "You're dyslexic and you're a librarian? Can you tell me a little more about that?"
"I didn't learn how to read until I was around seven or eight. All my primary school teachers would laugh right now to know I'm a librarian, because reading was a struggle for me. But a teacher worked with me one-on-one to work on my reading skills and develop different strategies for managing my dyslexia. I typed, rather than hand-wrote, my tests--and ended up lugging around a giant computer the size of a desk every time I moved house. Even now, still use the strategies I learned then. In some ways, they've made me a better librarian, especially with copyediting.
"I feel particularly grateful to be in charge of academic accomnodations here at Notre Dame in London for those with invisible disabilities. I received the attention, help, and care I needed when I struggled, and I'm grateful to pass that on to someone else who is in a similar situation."

Seen on Bond Quad.

                  "What's something that frustrates you?"
"Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the constant landscaping work on campus. I study here often, and there's rarely a time when I don't have to listen to leafblowers or some other landscaping noises. I get that they're working to improve campus, but it makes it hard to enjoy the stillness and the beauty of the outdoors while I have the chance."

Seen on South Quad: positivity from a tree.

Seen at Clarke Memorial Fountain.

"We're originally from the same part of Mississippi. In fact, we would have gone to high school together, but she moved away before that. There was a magazine in the region that profiled high school seniors and mentioned where they were going to college. Her aunt brought a copy of this back to her, and said, 'Look, he's going to Notre Dame! You should make friends with him.' So we requested each other on Facebook. Our friends make fun of us for being a 21st-century couple, since we first 'met' through Facebook."
"He and I only spoke a little before school started. Then, on the very first day of classes, I got to my first college class early, as freshmen do. And the first person I saw outside the classroom was a familiar face: it was him. We started talking; we sat next to each other in class; we studied together."
"We went to mass together for a month before I asked her out. It was very Notre Dame of us. We had our first kiss on the bench next to Father Sorin on God Quad."
"And to top it all off, he proposed to me in front of the Dome last month."