Helen's Match Day and Graduation

What a weird time to be alive.

2020 is going to need several chapters…nay, several books to capture what has already transpired in these first five months. We’re all still under quarantine, and it feels like nothing is happening…but also simultaneously feels like everything is happening. In the past two months alone, life has unfolded every which way. Plans have been cemented, plans have been canceled. For one, we had to cancel our wedding which was scheduled for May 17th. We made the call pretty early on, so we were lucky enough that all our vendors are free next year on May 23rd. I (Helen) am a part of the Betches Brides group on Facebook and have heard countless horror stories about nonrefundable deposits and inflexible vendors, but we were ultra blessed to have sealed the date and the deals in like….2 days. There were a few hiccups (such as our wedding favors which we printed our original date on), but we emerged relatively unscathed.

In terms of plans that have been cemented, I matched at New York Medical College in Ob Gyn! The whole application and interview process was a big question mark looming over our heads this past year. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the match process, here it is in a nut shell: applicants send out apps, programs select people to interview, applicants attend interviews. Then the applicants rank the programs and the programs rank the applicants. This all gets thrown into a complicated computer algorithm which tries to match applicants with programs. On March 20th at noon, everyone finds out where they matched.

PRAISE THE LORD. Because He is good. The entire applications/interview/match process went very well. To be honest, I actually think I somewhat enjoyed the process (hindsight 20/20 lol)! I ended up receiving more interview invites than I could reasonably attend, and I pretty much only attended interviews at programs that I felt like I would enjoy (and also a few for fun because they paid for accommodations!) At the end of the day, I had a solid rank list and would have been happy at many of the programs. Since Daryl is training in NYC we had hoped and prayed and prayed and prayed that I would end up there…and I did! At the perfect program with all the surgical training and opportunities that I had wished for. It wasn’t the match day I expected (thank you coronavirus), but it was the perfect match. I am so grateful.

Max apparently does not enjoy being sandwiched by uteri.

The cats were unimpressed.

After Virtual Match Day came Virtual Graduation, which was a whole other whirlwind of its own. Graduation was scheduled for May 15th, but that incidentally was the day that I moved from Toledo, OH to New York City. We were so lucky that my parents and brother so graciously offered to help us move because WOW we needed so much help because 1) I was moving from a condo in Toledo where my bedroom alone was larger than our entire NYC apartment and 2) We both had fully furnished apartments that we had to cram into our new place. In the midst of moving, we had a mini graduation celebration :)

Daryl set up his very first balloon arch (more difficult than it sounds, as anyone who has ever set up a balloon arch will attest to) and I was both positively impressed with how lovely it was! My dad, the original Dr. Zhang (PhD in Chemistry at the age of 23, y’all), hooded me which was so special and sweet. Daryl managed to get all my friends (and their pets) along with my family to send in video clips of their congratulations which made me cry and get all up in my feels. He also got the cutest ice cream cake from a local specialty shop. It was all just so many feels, guys. SO MANY FEELS.

*also the whole month of May was super hard because I had to say goodbye to all of my amazing and dear friends in Toledo as everyone started to trickle out and move to their residency locations. Then I left and had to say goodbye to everyone who was staying in Toledo. I only cried like 4278934274327 times.

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White Coat Ceremony, August 2016

Medical School Graduation, 2020

HOW CUTE IS THIS? Daryl slayed this backdrop.

You can officially add the title “Event Planner” to your resumé. It was all perfect.

The whole fam bam

Dr. Zhang, at your cervix!

Photocred to the best instahubby in the world!

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It’s a weird time. The world seems to be imploding or exploding on any given day. But the sun still rises and sets and time stops for no one. For a Type 3/ESTJ control freak like me, it’s been quite the learning experience watching all my carefully laid plans go awry…my SF/Seattle trip, Match Day, medical school graduation, our wedding that we’ve been planning since September 2018, honeymoon to Japan (with the tickets bought and everything!)…the list goes on and on. Even little things like going apartment hunting (we signed a lease without ever seeing it in person), grocery shopping (thank goodness for InstaCart), and furnishing a whole apartment (everything…and I do mean EVERYTHING can be delivered these days) have been new and sometimes unsettling. But I’ve also learned that if we can ground ourselves in love and faith and purpose in these times, we can get through anything. I’m not usually a touchy-feely person, but I am LITERALLY DYING to throw my arms around everybody as soon as I possibly can.

Peace, love, and virtual hugs (for now),

Helen

2018 in Review

2018 was a whirlwind of a year filled with love, excitement, and *big life decisions*. Exactly one year ago, we were two separate souls living completely different lives. We had met just once in person back in September before our paths diverged again. On a whim (but also probably due to some nudging by Divine Intervention), I messaged him on SnapChat last NYE. That one random out-of-character moment led to the next 365 days which involved beginning to date, vacationing together, embarking on many little adventures, meeting each others’s families…and OH YEAH getting engaged about 7 months after we began dating. It also led me to this moment in time on December 31st, 2018— exactly one year after I sent that fateful text. I’m snuggled up on the couch with my man and my cat sipping tea and writing on our family blog. What. A. Year.

One day I’ll share our little love story on this blog, but essentially it was a happy combination of a dash of serendipity, a hint of luck, and a whole lot of Jesus taking the wheel. It seems impossible to recap everything that has happened this year, but here are a few highlights!

HIGHLIGHTS:

December 31st, 2017 at 9:17PM. Trust me, NO ONE IS CRINGING AT THIS MORE THAN I AM. I used my cat to bait a boy. Talk about most embarrassing moments...in my defense, it worked!! I had to use my iPad to take a picture of this conversation so I could send it to Amy to consult on this strange thing that I did.

Valentines day! We went to a wine and paint night and then to Mancy’s Steakhouse. Found that we share a love for fine dining which is unfortunate for a pair of medical students!

One of my proudest accomplishments this year: converting a dog person into a CAT PERSON!! Max is quite taken with his cat-dad :)

July- Las Vegas, Sedona, Flagstaff, Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon, and Grand Canyon! Video- CLICK HERE!

September 24th- Our Engagement!

August- Baltimore and Washington DC!

Someone turned THIRTY!! :)

Christmas in Rochester, NY!

Skiing at Bristol Mountain!

New Year's Eve

December 31st - New Years Eve. A date we often take time to reflect back and look forward to all the great new things to come in the new year. If you were to ask me what I envisioned my 2018 would be like a year ago, I would not have predicted all the amazing things that happened in my life. As a medical student, it’s sometimes hard to find free time outside of school. A lot of my time was spent in clinical rotations at the hospital and doing multiple emergency medicine rotations all over the country, which reaffirmed that emergency is definitely the field that I want to be in. But more importantly, the time I spent outside of the hospital was largely spent with Helen. When I think of New Years Eve, I think about how my life changed entirely from this date exactly one year ago. The date when my relationship with her really began.

It was December 31st, 2017 when we started to see and talk to each other on a regular basis. Looking back at the last year, I’ve realized that my life has never been so full. The experiences, the emotions, and the conversations I’ve had with Helen have made me really reconsider my outlook on life. I used to think that my career was something that was the most important thing in my life. Having gone through a five year undergraduate in engineering, working in industry, going back for a 2 year post-bac, 4 years of medical school followed by years of residency training to come, how could it not, right? Wrong. The more our relationship grew, the more I realized that there’s more to life than a career. There’s such a vast spectrum of the human experience to explore - raw emotions, worldly experiences, and I couldn’t be happier than to be able to experience it with Helen.

To celebrate this day one year ago, I decided to take Helen to The Kitchen - a small and cozy restaurant in Pittsford, NY run by Chef Joseph Picolla. He runs a constantly changing prix fix menu and we found it to be a very interesting dining experience! The restaurant itself seats no more than 20 people, so it was a fairly intimate setting. At first glance, the menu itself doesn’t seem like anything special - butternut squash ravioli, pizza, fish taco, turkey dinner, and cherry pie. However, each dish was deconstructed and elevated in a surprisingly unique and tasteful manner. The food itself was all plated in front of us, which was really interesting to watch as they spent so much effort into making each dish look great!

Helen looking beautiful as usual, wine in hand

personalized tasting menu was a nice touch!

Chef Joseph Picolla: Meticulously plating each dish

Butternut Squash Ravioli: Pea tendrils, butternut squash, sous-vide egg yolk, powdered olive oil, and walnuts in a mysterious sweet and creamy sauce that neither of us can recall what it consisted of.

PIZZA: A very liberal term of what we would call a pizza, but was extremely delicious nonetheless. Vine ripened heirloom tomato cored out and stuffed with sweet Italian sausage and mozzarella on a bed of crushed homemade bread and topped with a tomato foam, olive oil, and balsamic

Fish Taco: Sous-vide halibut, corn chips topped with blanched watercress and 4 different sauces.

Turkey Dinner: Sous-vide turkey breast wrapped in a sage and sausage stuffing served on top of a potato puree and topped with an orange and star-anise spiced cranberry sauce.

Cherry Pie: Interestingly, dessert was the most filling dish of the course. An eggnog creme brulee served with a hashtag pie crust, whip cream, and a sweet cherry sauce.

The Proposal

We had been dating less than a year when I proposed, but I already knew early on that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Helen.

The Ring

Knowing what kind of ring she'd like was actually the easy part. I'm positive Helen doesn't remember telling me this, but I already knew what she liked during our fourth date. I don't know exactly how it came up, but she mentioned liking solitaires on a 6 point setting with a thin band at some point during our conversation. I was already head over heels for her, and I remember putting that exact description into my phone for future reference because I had a gut feeling already that she was the one.

When it came down to actually finding a ring, I was living out of my car on away rotations moving from NY, to PA, to IL at the time, making it a bit of a challenge to find a jeweler that I could work with. Thankfully, my parents knew a jeweler in Toronto who was able to help (thanks mom and dad). I spent hours researching rings and diamonds so I could give him the exact specifications that I wanted. After weeks of back and forth trying to find exactly what I wanted, we finally found it.

The Proposal

For months I actually wrestled with when, how, and where I was going to propose. I had several ideas and options to go on. I thought of doing a scavenger hunt in Toledo going through all of our first dates and memorable locations, a romantic proposal in Chicago across the skyline, and during Thanksgiving with Helen's family, but decided against none of these in the end. September 23, 2018. Helen and I didn't realize this until later, but this date was exactly one year from the day that we first talked to each other. I decided to propose on September 23rd because Helen and I were visiting her parents in Rochester that weekend and my parents were making a trip down for a barbecue. In the end, I felt that our engagement would feel more meaningful with the support of both of our parents beside us.

Interestingly, the proposal might not have happened due to some miscommunication. My parents didn't know I was going to propose that day and almost didn't bring the ring. I hadn't seen the ring in person yet, and I thought I expressed to my parents that I wanted them to bring it, but since they knew I was coming back home to Canada that same evening, they thought I'd pick up the ring back home. The night before, I messaged my mom asking if she was going to bring the ring. She said was confused by my message, but decided to bring it anyway. Crisis averted.

When my parents came in, one of the first things my mom did was give me the ring when Helen wasn't looking. I hadn't seen the ring in person yet, so I quickly went to the bathroom and took a quick peek. It was perfect. I hid it underneath the sink and went back and pretended as if nothing happened. Throughout the entire day, I was incredibly nervous thinking of how exactly and when I was going to propose. It was the only thing I could think of. Every second I kept evaluating whether or not now would be a good time. Since my parents were visiting from Waterloo, they had to make a fairly early drive back to take care of our dogs, Milo and Mika. Around 3PM, my dad said they should probably get going, and it was at this point I went into a state of panic. I knew that if I was going to propose today, it was either now or never. I quickly said I had to go to the bathroom and went to go get the ring. There was only one problem. The ring box was too big to put into my pocket without being exceedingly obvious. Front pocket, back pocket, pant leg. Nothing worked. I spent at least 5 minutes in the bathroom trying to figure out the best way to conceal the ring inconspicuously. I was worried I was taking too long so I just brought the ring down and hid it in the study room and tried to pretend as if I wasn't internally imploding. Thank goodness a few minutes after I got back, Helen decided to go to the bathroom as well. At this point, I told our parents that I was going to propose. I quickly went to the study to grab the ring and set up a camera to start recording. When Helen came back, she immediately questioned why the camera was recording. I couldn't think of a good excuse, so I told her to come here and took her hand. For weeks I had planned in my head all the things I wanted to tell her during the proposal; however in execution, I forgot and stumbled my way through only half of what I wanted to say (sorry, Helen!). Nevertheless, I laughed it off, and got down on one knee.