Dr. Koreanlove or: How I Learned to Stop Waiting and Propose to the Laura (Short Version)

So it happened on Monday, August 8th, 2005. We decided we would celebrate our 17-month "anniversary" that day (since we started dating on March 8th, 2004). I decided to take her to the same places that we went on the day we started dating.

For dinner, we went to a Japanese restaurant called Nijo Castle, in Newark. It was the first time we'd gone there since that fateful day, and the experience was the same; mediocre.

Afterwards, we decided to go to "our lake" (Lake Elizabeth in Fremont). I parked the car and we started to walk around the lake, just like the first time. We talked about what exactly we had talked about before. How I was waiting for her to stop talking before I would launch into my speech about how I liked her, but she kept talking for a good 10 minutes before she took a breather. How she was still thinking about some wise words I had said back at the restaurant, and then I told her I was thinking about something too. How back then, I couldn't find the right words to tell her how I felt, so I just lamely came up with "I have feelings for you" (she really doesn't like that phrase).

I had us sit down at one of the benches next to the path. Laura surprised me with a gift! It was a letter, a letter about the story of how we got together and the glimpses of God's handiwork in that. I offered to read it out loud. Reading it reminded me how good of a writer she is. It lovingly and beautifully describe the wonder of God bringing us together.

I then told her I had a gift for her as well. I pulled out a...

scrapbook. It was a very simple scrapbook which had 17 pages of pictures and captions, describing our relationship, from the very beginning (where we first met in Perspectives). So the first picture was of Christ Community Church of Milpitas, and the caption under it read: "Christ Community Church of Milpitas - where Chongsun and Laura met in a Perspectives class, Spring 2003". The following pictures and captions showed different things in our relationship, like where we had our first "date", or a picture of us at our one-year anniversary, or a picture of Beary, the bear we built together at Build-A-Bear Workshop.

The second-to-last page in the scrapbook was a picture of Lake Elizabeth, and the caption mentioned that this was the place where we decided to go for our 17-month "anniversary". The very last page was a picture of a bench, the very bench that we were sitting on. The caption read: "Bench at Lake Elizabeth - where Chongsun proposed to Laura with an engagement ring, August 8, 2005". Unfortunately she read ahead and gasped, but then I had her read it out loud.

After she finished reading, I got down on one knee and pulled out the ring case. My speech went something like this: "These 17 months have been so wonderful and God has grown me so much from them. I love you and know I want to marry you. 17 months ago I asked you to be my girlfriend. Now I want to ask you, will you be my wife?" She said yes and started crying. One lady passed by and said, "You need a camera for that!" Another said, "Say yes!" She said yes again. Then I put the ring on her finger. At first, we forgot which hand I was supposed to put it on, but eventually we remembered it to be the left hand. It fit perfectly. We hugged and spent some time on that bench. She called her parents. It was a wonderful evening.

Now we have three things to commemorate our special occasion: our scrapbook, our lake and our bench.