LANCE BIGGERS and YULIANA BELEVA

They got married four months ago and now live in San Diego, CA. “I love Yuliana very much and am forever grateful for the time we spent together at AUBG.  And I'm even more grateful that she's given me these last 3.5 years of her life. I can only hope she wants to give me more,” says Lance.  

ARTAN AJAZAJ and MONIKA EVSTATIEVA

They have been together for 5 years, 1 month and 5 days. Artan and Monika first met during orientation week. Both lived in Volga, AUBG’s former dormitory. “In Volga everything was possible, if you know what I mean,” says Monika. Yes, of course we do know what she means, don’t we? “AUBG is a make or break place,” says Monika, “It made it harder actually, because we were both doing too many things at the same time. But on the other side, this is how we really got to know each other.” “It helped us to get to know each other better, get to love all the things we do together, find out all the things we have in common and develop it into something bigger and better,” Artan says. Monika recalls one episode, when “a gigantic Bulgarian guy with his gigantic friends” poured his beer on her in empty Underground and Artan just took one by the sleeve and started dragging him out. “I just thought at that moment that I have never met anybody in my life who does not know fear. Or does not fear – fear,” she recalls, “I think we are both very crazy. But maybe he is crazier.” Asked how they managed to stay together being from different countries and different backgrounds, she says “Yes, it was very hard. We are from different countries, we practice different religions, and we come from two very different communities. We had issues with our parents accepting our relationship. We had friends that were not very supporting. But if you love somebody, you do not need anybody's approval. I think I just knew in my heart that I wanted to be with him and that helped me pass though the bumpy moments.” “We are very lucky,” Artan says, “I guess destiny or because we wanted it very much.” “Now, we are just trying to be happy in Washington, DC. I think that no matter what you are trying to do with your life, you need to have somebody who loves to be there with you to support you. We are both having challenging and bold jobs, so it is great to be there for each other, when the energy starts running low,” says Monika.

DAEHWAN and KSENIA

Daehwan Kim, a former professor of Economics at AUBG, and Ksenia Chizhova, AUBG alumna, met way before they came to AUBG. She was learning Korean at the Korean cultural center in her hometown, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia. Daehwan was the teacher. Disclaimer: their relationship did not go against work ethics and contractual obligations, as Daehwan was not officially employed there. They are together for about 5 and a half years already. “I do not really see anything special about AUBG that could have influenced us. I guess in a relationship people go through stages, and it is rather the time that matters,” says Ksenia. “It was nice to be at the same place together. In Korea, there is a whole lot of family obligations for married people, which honestly can be quite overwhelming. Once we got away from that, the rest did not seem to matter much.”“About different backgrounds, I was about to be politically correct and say that it does not really matter. Actually it does,” Ksenia admits. “But somehow I realized it only now. I guess you just have to disregard certain things. But in the end, we actually often talked about it, and thought we are not that much "culturally" or "racially" or "nationally" apart,” she says. On the “bright memory from AUBG” question, Ksenia says: “Rather than bright memory, I would remember a funny case, when Daehwan's TA heard his friends saying that Prof. Kim was dating a freshman. It was in our first year when some people apparently have not figured out we were officially married. I thought it was really funny.”  She explains how their relationship developed. “Somehow I think we got positively disillusioned. I used to think his judgment would be impeccable on all matters. It took me almost five years to figure out it is not. And I was really glad at my discovery. I would not really want to be married to a perfection.” This year she started her PhD at Columbia University in Premodern Korean Literature. Her husband is working in Frankfurt as a financial analyst. On Thursday he’ll be flying in for St. Valentine's Day and staying three days with her in New York. “Somehow when I tell other people about this they say their views on marriage become more positive,” says Ksenia.

DAVIT MAMULAISHVILI and ESA RUGOVA

Davit Mamulaishvili, Georgia, and Esa Rugova, Kosovo, graduated from AUBG in May 2005 and they first met while studying at AUBG. Before they started dating each other, they had a lot of common friends and hung out together for some time. They have been together for almost 4 years already. Asked about the best memory from that period, Davit says that there are too many of them. “It is impossible to single one out,” he says. Maybe that is why they come back to AUBG again and again. “We came back last May, because many of our friends were graduating. And we plan to do so this year as well because we still have some really good friends there,” says Davit. Their relationship developed pretty fast, as Davit said. “Esa and I went to Provincetown for two straight summers, so wicked schedule there contributed to us becoming closer.” They are now studying at CEU and working parallely in Budapest. On “how did you manage to stay together” question Davit responded as follows: “Love is a cheesy answer, so I would say that similar interests and similar look on life keep us together.”