On October 8th, I got engaged to Shannon Mollie Epps. This may come as a surprise to some who didn't even know we were dating, but that was partially on purpose. As coworkers, we tried to keep our budding romance under wraps for as long as possible to avoid the office politics, but I think in retrospect most everyone probably knew anyway. Regardless, Shannon and I met two years ago in DC while we were in training for the State Department. One day, Shannon's A-100 class was invited to play my class in volleyball in Falls Church. I stopped by to offer my friends moral support, when a friend introduced me to Shannon, who had previously been assigned to Caracas. From the second we met, I knew I needed to get to know her better. Unfortunately, a few weeks later she shipped off to Venezuela. We kept in touch for the next several months over email, then spent some time together after I arrived in country. Six months later, I finally got the courage to ask her out to a movie. She suggested Harry Potter. Nearly a year later, having spent almost every day together, I proposed.
Hers:
I met Michael Keith Ritchie (Mike) during training in July 2009 in DC. We had both been assigned to work at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. We got to know each other a little bit during our first year in Venezuela (though not too much, because I decided my best course of action was ignoring him at work, so nobody could corner me and ask me if I liked him, which I did :) We started dating almost a year ago (so glad he had the gumption to ask me out), and tried to keep it on the down-low as best we could, though I think towards the end pretty much everyone at the embassy knew.
