How we got together

Timothy's POV (point of view)

- July 24th - 

I get selected for a Frisbee team (going to a tournament to Denmark in March) and confirm that I will make the training weekends that will take place in Cork in November and December. (What does this even have to do with the story?)

- July 27th - 

I feel like I need to start learning Hungarian and spend the next 6 hours on Duolingo (as in, really need to learn this language) and take an unplanned day off from my Masters. 

- July 28th - 

Again, I spend 4 hours on Duolingo and at this point I am questioning my sanity. In the evening, walking back from the store, I'm praying to God asking why on earth I am learning Hungarian. At that exact time,  I get a message from Mom saying that a Christian Hungarian girl who came from a large family, with all the same interests and hobbies that I have, would be staying with them that semester.  I spend the rest of the evening laughing.

- August - 

I make plans to visit Cork before heading to an additional Frisbee tournament in Belgium. My sister (Sarah) tells me that the time I will be there coincides with when she will be gone. I therefore decide to stay an extra week. In addition, my plane ticket to Denmark (for Frisbee tournament in March) randomly gets cancelled.

- September 18th - 

The day arrives when I fly back to Cork, where my sister has organized a gaming event. Later on, Kata and another student Tomás (from Slovakia) come back from a Christian Union event. Tomás introduces a dice puzzle game called “Petals around the Rose”. However, I was massively confused due to the choice of dice colour – 4 white and 1 blue, since it wasn't explained that this was irrelevant. Going to bed that evening, I start thinking about the dice game (I had bad food poisoning the previous day and so am wrecked), and my brain thinks of the solution to the puzzle game. However, everyone has already gone to bed, so I spend all night waiting to test my hypothesis.

- September 19th - 

I hear footsteps. I quickly leave my room and ambush the victim, who happens to be Kata, and check whether I am correct, which of course I am. Score. That Sunday, Sarah is on worship at church for the morning service while Kata for the evening service. However, my Dad is speaking at both, so I planned to attend both. Kata doesn't know the songs for the evening service, so Sarah, Kata, and I spend the entire afternoon singing and worshipping. (P5 check). That evening on the way home, the topic of L-plates for driving comes up, where in Hungary they use T instead. I ask about the word, since I know that “diák” is the word for student. Kata doesn't even register what I'm saying, since the possibility of me knowing some Hungarian doesn't even occur to her. After a less awkward situation than I imagined where it comes out that I'm learning Hungarian, (let's be honest, it's weird) Kata, Tomás and I have a 2-hour conversation on languages and alphabets.

And thus begins the late night conversations until 3 am. But hey, I'm on holiday.

- September 20-23 -

Some of the key moments which occurred over the next few days

1. Kata being happy to go out to pass a frisbee/rugby ball even though she hadn't done the latter before. (Check P3)
2. Kata playing the best first game of Puerto Rico that I had ever seen. (In my opinion, PR is the ancestor of all top boardgames - Check P4)
3. Kata making a really nice Apple thing. (Bonus)
4. Having 3am conversations with Kata and Tomás about everything - cultures, morals, family, history, etc, etc (Check P2)
5. Through the course of the week, checked off P1.

- September 24th - 

I have 5 days left in Cork, and know that I will be visiting in November and December. Although it's only been 6 days so far, I don't want to let her go. Already on day 1, I'd decided that I'd ask her out. If she says (i) no - that would be quite sad, but at least I can spend the remaining time in Cork with my mates; (ii) yes - let's get this started and visiting in November and December will be more meaningful. 

Start the morning in a enlightening conversation with Tomás and Kata, where Tomás starts the topic of cultural wedding traditions and some big steps. He has his then-fiancée (now wife) back in Slovakia, so he is totally comfortable bringing this up, which is good because I never would at this stage. After this great pep-talk, I want to ask Kata out, but I want to ask her when we are alone. Lunch comes, and I can't eat, but thankfully I can blame it on the fact that we are having lasagne (my favourite food) for dinner, and I typically don't eat that much prior. Afterwards we go to the field, and thankfully Tomás decides to head home to get some water. Doing some quick calculations based on walking speed, that means I have approximately 12-18 minutes. After a few minutes of working myself up, Kata throws the rugby ball short at which point I use this as a chance to get down and ask her out. I have no idea what either of us actually said, but here we are now about to getting married, so I guess it went well.

An hour later, I found out that my graduation that was delayed would be taking place in October. Whether I would've gone prior is up in the air, but now of course I'm going.

- After September 24th -

1. I would need to visit Hungary at some stage and there were good tickets from Bristol - Budapest and Budapest - Denmark, so I buy tickets to Budapest in March.
2. The big Frisbee tournament gets cancelled, so now I have flights to Cork for both November and December which I wouldn't have had otherwise and a one-way ticket to Hungary since I no longer need to go to Denmark.
3. Kata beats me in Race for the Galaxy (a good boardgame which I have a lot of experience in) on her 6th play through.

Kata's POV

- November 2020 -

I was scrolling on my phone, checking my emails and I found an interesting one "Erasmus application deadline has been extended". I checked the deadline, there was 1 week left. 'Why not?!' - I thought, and I applied to two different universities in Ireland and one in France.

- Spring 2021 -

I got a mail that I have been accepted to the University College of Cork in Ireland. So exciting! I got in contact with a couple in Cork who work at the same mission organization as my parents.

- May-June 2021 -

I had to put my search for accommodation in Cork on hold due to some uncertainties that had to be resolved.

- July 2021 -

I finally started looking for accommodation and everything was very expensive and way over my budget. I was worried that I will not find a good accommodation and I prayed for help.

- 28th July, 2022 -

The Cork couple I contacted before gave me the contact of Student Worker from the UCC Christian Union who lead me to another Christian couple (Frank and Jo Peters), who used to take in students before the pandemic.

I immediately texted Jo and sent her a short introduction of myself and when she replied the same night, I couldn't believe what I've read. The opportunity she offered was way better than anything I would have ever imagined. Music, boardgames, family environment, close to the school and all this within my budget. At that point I knew that God prepared this place for me. We decided to have a videocall where Jo could show me around the house and we could chat a little bit. After the call my mom and I broke out in tears. We almost couldn't believe it. Everything about that place and that family felt right and my mom said: "Okay, I know that I will not have to worry about you. You'll be home there." It also turned out that my message about the accommodation was an answer to Frank&Jo's prayer too because the day before they were praying about whether they should accommodate students this year or not.

- 1-2 September 2021 -

My plane took off, SO EXCITING! I arrived to Cork at 4:00 in the morning. On the same day when I woke up in the afternoon I went to Radical Life Church with Jo for a prayer meeting and a worship practise! It didn't take long to take my place in the band. :)

I quickly became good friends with Sarah since we got along so well! I got used to the place and made myself home. The Peters family helped with this a lot, they made me feel like a member of their family too.

- Saturday, 18 September -

The youngest son of the family came to visit, but I went to a Christian Union meetup with the other students living in the house. We only got home in the afternoon just before dinner. there were a lot of people over for dinner - Timothy's friends - and Tomas took the opportunity to show all of them a riddle - Petals around the Rose - we (the people who lived in the house) have successfully cracked during the previous days. Some of the people were successful in figuring out the solution of the riddle, but not Timothy. The evening went on, we played some games and watched a movie.

- Sunday, 19-22 September -

The first thing on Sunday morning when I went downstairs to have a shower was Timothy attacking me with a few dice (Petals around the Rose is played with dice) and asked me "is this the solution?"... it was... He'd been thinking about that the whole night before! LOL

It was a busy day for the household - Sarah was playing the guitar at the morning service, I was playing at the evening service and Frank was preaching both sermons. After the first sermon we got back to the house and I started practising the songs for the evening and Sarah and Timothy were quick to help me with the songs I didn't know. We ended up singing worship songs throughout the whole afternoon. Later that day, on the way back from the evening service, Timothy, Tomas and I were talking about different languages. Tomas told us what letter was on the learner drivers' car in Slovakia and I told them that in Hungary it is T for "tanuló". Then we got out of the car and Timothy asked me: what is the difference between "tanuló" and "diák"? I had to ask him to repeat a few times because I was trying to hear English words, I wasn't expecting him to speak Hungarian words to me. Finally, Timothy confessed that he has started learning Hungarian that summer. You can imagine how shocked I was... Why Hungarian?! How did he even know this language existed?! Well, he couldn't really give me a proper answer, he "just felt like he should."

The following few nights (something like Sunday-Thursday) Timothy, Tomas and I stayed up until 2-3 am talking about anything and everything.

On Monday Timothy's friends came over and I quickly beat them in poker before rushing to school, on Tuesday Tomas, Timothy and I went shopping and to the bank. Timothy also offered to carry my groceries which was very nice of him. This is where I started to pay a bit more attention to him. I wrote a list of my future spouse's preferred qualities:

• dedicated Christian
• definitely taller than me and not a stick figure
• loves and knows how to play music (at least slightly so that we can do worship together)
• 2-5 years older than me
• a man with a brain (and knows how to use it)
• loves boardgames and knows what to do with them
• loves team sports and does not sacrifice everything just to win
• knows how to bring me out and doesn't let me be too lazy
• knows how to dance (an extra)

And then I compared Timothy to the list:

• yes
• yes, 195 cm, normal figure
• yes: guitar, piano, amazing voice
• yes: born in 1998.05.18.
• yes: applied maths phd + bakes bread
• yes: boardgame fan
• yes: plays ultimate frisbee competitively + any other sport casually
• I cannot be sure but I would think so
• I don't know
• +1: learning Hungarian

So he pretty much ticked my list in its full length. That is when I said to myself: yeah, I could imagine that my future husband will be someone like Timothy Peters.

In this semester I only had classes on Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning and Wednesday was a full day from 9am-5pm.

- Thursday, 23 September 2021 -

On Thursday morning Timothy decided that he will go shopping and I needed some ingredients for my apple crumble so I joined him. I also needed some special ingredients which I could not find in Lidl and Timothy walked me to a Polish Shop to see if I can find it there. Well, the Shop didn't exist anymore, so we turned back to walk home. He stepped down the sidewalk to cross the road when a car came up and I had to grab him not to step in front of it - yeah, DID I save his life. (Okay, maybe he would've noticed it anyway but better to be safe than sorry.)So we walked home and then started preparing the apple crumble. Or rather I started preparing it and Timothy sat there with his supporting presence. Okay, he helped peeling the apples.

Later in the afternoon Zac came over again (he basically came over every day since Timothy arrived...) and they showed me a game, called Puerto Rico. Later in the evening we had the apple crumble as a dessert for dinner with Frank's home made vanilla ice cream and we watched the Phantom of the Opera.

By this time I felt like I could feel something about Timothy if I let myself but I didn't want to. I thought if anything could happen between us, that would come in time, maybe after being friends for a while and if his way of starting to learn Hungarian was a sign from God, that was definitely for him and not for me. And knowing him (because I knew him sooo well after just a few days) there was no way anything would've happened until he asked God and got a "yes". So I was safe, I let it go, I didn't have to think about it anymore.

- Friday, 24 September 2021 -

On Friday after morning we had a nice conversation in the living room with Tomas, Grace (masters student staying in the Peters house) and Timothy. Tomas was excited to tell us about his fiancée, the wedding preparation, their story of how they got together and then how he proposed to her and eventually we ended up talking about wedding traditions in different countries.

After all of us but Timothy had lunch (he used "lasagne for dinner" as an excuse) the boys and I went out to the field to throw the frisbee and to move around a bit before dinner. After some time Tomas got thirsty so he went back to the house to grab some water leaving Timothy and I alone on the field. We threw the frisbee in silence until it fell on the ground somewhere in between us. Timothy came closer to grab it but when he went down on his knee to collect the disk, he stayed there and glanced up at me. He said something like "I know this is weird" and that "we only know each other since a week" and "I don't want it to be awkward between us after this" and he finally got it out:

"Will you go out with me?"

I'm not even sure in which order he said those previous sentences but this last one was among them with these exact words. A thousand and one thoughts ran through my head: I was shocked, pleasantly surprised, in disbelief, and all these emotions.

I said "yes" or "okay" or I don't even remember what exactly but definitely something affirmative. And then I felt like a crazy person (well, about this... I still do). And I think this is when I let myself fall in love with him.

And then we just kept throwing the frisbee with the biggest grin on our faces until Tomas came back with Grace and we didn't really talk to each other anymore until after dinner, when our usual late night conversation begun.

The Beginning.