A transcendent experience with cheese and bread

A couple of weeks ago, Sam and I went up to Brighton Beach, which is an area of Brooklyn which has a lot of native Russian speakers living there. I was having a blast--listening to Russian being spoken on the boardwalk, speaking to cashiers in Russian, and buying Ukrainian juice and candies.

[the ones on the right are my favorite.]

The highlight of that day, though, was going to the Georgian restaurant, and especially having the khachapuri. If you don't know what khachapuri is, it is a traditional Georgian dish which is essentially melted cheese in a bread boat.

And it is a revelation.

Seriously, every time we took a bite, it was like we were about to start weeping with joy. So. Good. DEFINITELY one of my top food experiences. If I am ever in Georgia, I'm guessing that the khachapuris there will be better, but then again, I'm not exactly sure. This one was so good. It changed all of our lives. You think I am exaggerating, but I am not.

Christmas Break in DC

For Christmas this year, Sam and I went down to DC to spend Christmas with Sam’s family. We had a nice break with family and friends. There was always good food, good company, good conversations, and lots of holiday cheer and fun excursions.

[good food.]

[fun excursions.]

[we saw a star war.]

[botanical gardens.]

[christmas cheer.]

[advent.]

[pie making.]

[nephew holding.]

[little women viewing.]

[another excursion, this time to annapolis. my dad was at the naval academy, so we made sure to snap a picture since we were thinking about him.]

One of my favorite excursions was a trip to the Glenstone Museum. It is a relatively new museum, and it specializes in modern art. Some of my favorite parts of the museum were the buildings themselves. The architecture was beautiful, and I liked being able to walk around the campus, as the museum had pieces of art located both inside and outside.

[do you see that rocking-horse-head shape up there? that is art.]

[this is art.]

[art.]

[this soup is art, too. i ate art.]

[one of my favorite things was just walking the grounds.]

[so beautiful.]

[also. it me.]

To ring in the New Year, we had a Just Dance Party. I think that's fitting. 

Also, in thinking about the New Year, I didn’t really make any New Year’s resolutions this year. Instead, I’m just trying to focus on small improvements/habits/goals without doing anything too grand. (And, this coming year is going to be one of a lot of archival research and projects, so I don't want to put too much pressure on myself.) However, one of those small goals is learning new recipes (in particular, I’ve really wanted to learn how to make soups). I made a kale, white bean, and sausage soup tonight and it turned out pretty good (if I do say so myself, #domesticgoddess). 

So, if any of you have soup recipes, please send them my way.

A decade in review from the eyes of two

Me, being me, felt the need to do some kind of decade-in-review. Since the 2010s corresponded with my 20s, there is a lot that happened during the past ten years. So I took a page out of my friend Em's book (well, quite literally, I stole this format from her), and I'm including both my highlights and lowlights over the past 10 years, and Sam is posting his, too. In short, this is basically a ten-years-in-review Christmas card (and I aim to actually send Christmas cards in 2020, but this is what you get for now.)

(And I know that this is a week later than most of these "decade-in-reviews" were posted . . . it takes awhile to put them together! And if you thought you were free from these things, sorry to disappoint you.)


2010:

[jumping at arthur's seat in edinburgh. megan is at the far right. july 2010]

Megan's highlights: 

• Made friends during my freshman and sophomore years who would continue to be close friends for my entire BYU experience (and beyond). 
• Declared an English major at BYU (and I would actually stay an English major--I never switched majors.) 
• Attended a nine-week summer program at Cambridge (Pembroke-King's Programme) that changed the course of my intellectual trajectory. Among the BYU students there, I was one of the youngest, and the older students made me feel so welcomed, and I felt like I made a second home in Cambridge. 

Megan's lowlights: 

• Homesickness. Both at Cambridge and at BYU. (I know, I know, I was only 20 minutes away from home. But I get homesick easily, no matter the distance.) 
• Grappling with low self-confidence and, like many freshmen at BYU, realizing that you're not going to be the smartest one in your class anymore--and learning to be okay with that (learning to be okay with that was a good thing, to be sure--but it was a challenge). 

Climbing at Rock Canyon

Sam's highlights: 

• Thoroughly enjoyed a literature class on Tolkien at BYU. 
• Long list of irresponsible freshman shenanigans. 
• Declared a History major at BYU. 
• Flew to Santiago, Chile, to start a two-year mission. 

Sam's lowlights:

• Infected wisdom teeth that were removed in Chile while I was awake, and I only had ibuprofen to deal with the pain. 
•  Uncaring, cold, businesslike mission culture. 

2011 

[megan opens her mission call. november 2011]

Megan's highlights: 

• Took some really wonderful literature and language classes at BYU. I particularly enjoyed my modern British literature survey course (hellllloooo, romanticism)  and a Bible as Literature course. I also was a fan of my German courses and my German study group. 
• Traveled to Kansas with my family (and Sharisa!) to visit my Grandma Rytting. I also took a trip to Concord, Massachusetts during the fall to see my Nana. 
• Saw the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (yes, I dressed up with my sisters). 
• Made the decision to serve a mission and then got my mission call to Donetsk, Ukraine. 

Megan's lowlights:

• General stress/anxiety about workload in my classes. 
• General angst about unrequited crushes.  

Demonstrating that my mission only robbed me of some of my personality

Sam's highlights: 

• Rode bikes through the mountains and vineyards of Chile
• Ate a lot of delicious bread, ripe tomatoes, and good fruit
• Fell in love with the people of Chile
• Got to go to the Museum of Memory about Chile's military dictatorship. 

Sam's lowlights: 

• Uncaring, cold, businesslike mission culture. 

2012 

[fields of eastern ukraine. summer 2012]

Megan's highlights: 

• Arriving in Ukraine as an LDS missionary and experiencing all of the depths, nuances, beauty, and complexities of Ukraine. 
• First experiencing Ukraine with my fabulous trainer, Mirielle Hudson, and the thrill of learning Russian first-hand, on the streets, through intimate encounters with people. There is something about being a missionary that makes people open up to you in ways that they wouldn't if you did not have that little tablichka on your chest. 
• Meeting Ukrainians, especially babushki. 
• Getting to serve with some pretty wonderful missionaries. Especially getting to spend October-December 2012 with Emily Nevers; to train her and serve with her in a small corner of Kharkov, Ukraine that saw so many miracles--both in the people we met and the way I was emotionally healed that autumn.

Megan's lowlights: 

• The thrill and fear and frustration of learning Russian. In many ways, it felt like what I imagine many two-year-olds feel when trying to learn their first language. 
• Sexual harassment from Ukrainian men, verbal harassment from Ukrainian women and men. The tablichka right above your heart is both a blessing and a curse. 
• Harassment from other missionaries. I suffered verbal and emotional abuse from some of my companions, and those weeks were some of the most difficult weeks of my life.

This guy served in Salvador Allende's cabinet as Minister for Education.

Sam's highlights:

•  Met Diogenes Gregorio Olavarria Valdiva, who, when dropped while being baptized, said "I felt completely at peace, it was like I was turning over in my mother's amniotic fluid" and who gave me the widest possible intellectual horizons for my faith.
• Came home to Nepal, hiked in the high deserts, read on hammocks while monsoon rains poured, and caught rats with sticky traps.
• Reunited with Harrison and made friends with Ben and Romm.
• Spent the holidays at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and on beaches in Thailand 

 

Sam's lowlights: 

• Uncaring, cold, businesslike mission culture morphs into uncaring pressure to get married at BYU
• Threw up on Christmas morning on a ferry

2013 

[homecoming. july 2013.]

Megan's highlights: 

• Deepened my love for Ukraine as I continued serving in different areas, met new people, and had life-changing conversations with Ukrainians and my companions. From October 2012-the end of my mission, I felt like I really came into my own and understood more about who I was and what I was capable of and of my own worth as an individual. I never felt more broken nor more complete than when I was on a mission, but I take those feelings of certainty, wholeness, and purpose as a gift from those times. As my second mission president said, "You served a mission to Ukraine. You can do anything you set your mind to." I believe that, and serving in Ukraine changed me forever. 
• Served with incredible women. I was glad that I got a chance to train again (twice), and training Melinda Ahlstrom and Julie Ricks in Mariupol at the end of my mission is something that I treasure. 
• Returned home from Ukraine! The reunion with my family was beautiful and a memory that makes me smile. 
• Started working with the Honors Program at BYU. 
• Won the Brimhall Essay Contest at BYU. 
• Russian 330--Russian Cultural History class and being reunited with friends from my MTC group and from my mission. 

Megan's lowlights: 

• Having to travel alone back from Ukraine to the US and having my flight delayed out of Kyiv (which would then make me miss the rest of my connecting flights), meaning that I had to spend the night alone in an Amsterdam hotel room--seriously jet lagged, confused, and just wanting to be home with my family. 
• Feeling both gutted and stupid after an over-ambitious hope of romance did not pan out after I returned home. 

Sam's highlights: 

My roommates walked in on me absolutely groovin' when this album came out

• DAFT PUNK'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES- seriously, what a masterpiece of an album. beautiful instrumentation, impeccable groove, and great collabs. 
• My review of Random Access Memories here
• I did a State Department internship at the consular section at the Embassy in Madrid, where my grandfather had served as Consul General and got exposed to foreign service life.
• Traveled in Spain, France, Switzerland, and Morocco. Lived that cheap eurotravel life.
• Took Dr. Jim Toronto's amazing class on the humanities of Islam.
• Living for a summer at my grandparent's cabin up Provo canyon with friends.
• Camped a bunch in Southern Utah

Sam's lowlights: 

• Summer job at Subway that was so bad it lasted two weeks
• Getting suckered by the BYU approach to dating
• Living in an apartment with an poor-mannered racist

2014 

[russian house girls get fro-yo. summer 2014.]

Megan's highlights: 

• Some amazing classes at BYU, including a Mormon Women's History class, an American Religious History class, and History and Russian capstone courses. 
• Realizing that I wanted to get higher education, and that I wanted that degree to be in History. It was too late to do a double major, but I took more History classes and took initiative in reaching out to professors and being involved in the History Department. 
• Presented a paper on Fractured Fairy Tales at the American Folklore Society annual conference in Santa Fe. 
• Had a term-long spring fling at the BYU Russian House and loved my roommates and the conversations we shared. 
• Interned at the Church History Department as a research assistant.  
• Took a lot of long walks in Provo and in the mountains. 
• Got to do archival research travel in Boston and DC for my Honors Thesis, and did some a family road trip to Kansas and Nauvoo. I enjoyed seeing friends and family while I was on the East Coast and Midwest. 
• Read Middlemarch. 
• Started applying to grad school. 
• Enjoyed working as a Writing Fellow. 

Megan's lowlights: 

• Started applying to grad school. 
• Had some weird and confusing dating experiences. 

Climbing at Snow Canyon

Sam's highlights: 

• Took an amazing class on the history of jazz
• Spent a lot of time slacklining, climbing, and hammocking
• Slacklined between two buildings while 20 ft. off the ground
• Got accepted to Cambridge for a master's in history!
• Went canyoneering
• Saw Porter Robinson's Worlds Tour and had my mind blown

Sam's lowlights: 

• Being so done with BYU culture
• Grad school applications

2015 

[ice cream with briana and dani at g&d's in oxford.]

Megan's highlights: 

• Getting into and deciding to go to Oxford! 
• My Tolstoy class at BYU during my last semester. 
• Graduating from BYU with an English major, History minor, and Russian language certificate. (And graduating with Honors.) 
• Having Sarah and Katy get home from their missions. 
• Starting my Master's program at Oxford, falling in love with England again, and meeting extraordinary people in my program, in my college, and in my ward. 

Megan's lowlights: 

• Strange limbo time between graduating BYU and heading off to Oxford. It gave me extra time with friends and family, for which I am grateful, but I was antsy to get up and start the next big thing. 
• Fallout from a bad breakup. 

This is the year I started my self-deprecating "Cambridge Elite" persona. The caption for this picture was "Arrogant Cambridge Elite sneers at other civilizations"

Sam's highlights: 

• Finally had the time and money to buy a ski pass and spent a lot of time skiing.
• Took 9 credits and had a really chill last semester before graduating
• Wrote my history capstone paper on the richest pirate who ever lived and the rumors about him
• Traveled in Europe for a couple of weeks, hitting Switzerland and Spain again
• Started grad school at Cambridge and loved it
• Saw the northern lights in Norway
• Spent Christmas with Gandhi's ashes (and my family) in India and went to the weirdest nationalist pep-rally on the Indo-Pakistani border
• Also went to the most bizarre Hindu fertility temple that involved crawling into a birth-canal cave and looking at trippy mirror-mosaics.

Sam's lowlights: 

• Lost my debit card right before I left the US, and that was a couple weeks after I had lost my wallet
• Slept under my cousin's bed in her freshman dorm
• Ski season ended in March :(

2016 

[oxford grad with dad. november 2016.]

Megan's highlights: 

• Used the nice, long inter-term breaks at Oxford to travel a lot! Went on a fantastic trip to Ireland with some friends, traveled to Paris, went to Berlin, and went on a crazy two-week Eastern Europe Extravaganza. I also traveled a lot in the UK and enjoyed visiting my aunt, uncle, and cousins who lived in Yorkshire at the time. 
• Enjoyed having people come visit me, including two of my sisters, extended family, and a mission companion. 
• Graduated with distinction from Oxford. (And loved being able to fly out in November with my dad to attend the graduation ceremony--and also loved having my friend Hannah attend.) 
• Started working for Church Magazines in Salt Lake City as an editor and writer. 
• Loved my SLC roommates and being closer to family. 
• Met Sam (again) and our romance began to build. 

Megan's lowlights:

• Dark, damp English nights. 
• PhD applications. 
• Politics.  

Mom had never been to England. She lovvvved it. 

Sam's highlights: 

• Spending most of my time walking in gardens, relaxing in churches, and reading for school
• Wore excessive amounts of tweed
• Went to Italy, Germany, and France and ate a lot of good food and spent more time in churches 
• Visited Tanzania to visit my parents, swam in the clear waters of the Indian Ocean, and went on safari in the Serengeti 
• Graduated from Cambridge and loved the ritual of it all
• Moved to DC and made great friends
• Flew out to Utah to take Megan on our first date

Sam's lowlights: 

• Spent Christmas on an airplane
• Populism wrecked me twice
• Moved to DC without a job and it was four months before I had a full-time job

2017 

[sam came up from dc to help me move into my new apartment in princeton. september 2017.]

Megan's highlights: 

• Got into the History PhD program at Princeton and decided to go. 
• Sam and I started dating in January. We were long distance our entire time dating, so every time I got to see him was a highlight. (As was the beautiful, unexpected grace of falling in love and having Sam fall in love with me.) 
• Celebrate Em and Nate's wedding! 
• Did some traveling before going to Princeton. Got to go back to the UK (and to the Queens' Ball with Sam), and got to travel to Spain, Italy, and the Holy Land. 
• Moving out to Princeton and making the drive with my mom. 
• Got engaged to Sam in November, right after Thanksgiving. 
• Visited Sam's family in Tanzania over Christmas break. 

Megan's lowlights: 

• The first semester of my PhD program was taxing. SERIOUS imposter syndrome and trying to stay on top of coursework was hard. 
• Long-distance dating. 
• Getting double pneumonia during my first semester of my PhD program. 

punting and absurd intellectual discussions

Sam's highlights: 

• Worked at USAID doing food aid to South Sudan, Sudan, and Chad and loved my co-workers
• Went to a lot of discussion groups with friends about various religious, social, and artistic issues
• Spent a lot of time wandering in the forest in Bethesda
• Dated Megan
• Went back to the UK, stayed in Oxford and Cambridge
• Ate a lot of good food
• Drove the North Coast 500 around the northernmost part of Scotland with my friend Neil. We camped by the ocean and had a great time.  The views were breathtaking.
• Proposed to Megan
• Spent Christmas in Tanzania with Megan and my parents

Sam's lowlights: 

• Spent a lot of time with motion sickness on the metro
• Got really bad food poisoning because I ate meat at Dunkin Donuts
• My friend Neil died

2018 

[formal wedding portraits by justin hackworth. may 2018.]

Megan's highlights: 

• Sam and I got married in May. We had the wedding reception the night before our wedding and they were two of the most lovely days of my life. Being surrounded by family and friends and just basking in the glow of love from friends, family, and Sam was just blissful. 
• Spent our honeymoon in a small cabin in upstate New York. 
• Some of my friends at Princeton threw me both an engagement party and a bridal shower and it was so incredibly kind of them. 
• Attending a Rytting family reunion. 
• Got some money from Princeton to do pre-dissertation funding, so I got to go back to England for the third year in a row. 
• Feeling like I was more on top of things at the beginning of my second year in my PhD program. 
• Celebrated Bailey and James's wedding! 

Megan's lowlights: 

• Planning a wedding while doing coursework. 
• Missing Sam during those archival research trips. 
• Still dealing with stress and anxiety about the PhD program and about the uncertainty of the future of academia, the world, the country, my life, etc. 

Wrote up a wedding announcement for the New York Times, and got it published

Sam's highlights: 

• Had a nice last five months in DC, had a lot of stimulating conversations, and spent time with great people
• Got married and took a nice honeymoon to Woodstock, NY
• Went back to the UK for fun
• Camped in Vermont in the fall

Sam's lowlights: 

• Took a lot of flights
• Was unemployed for 6 months

2019 

[megan in japan. september 2019.]

Megan's highlights: 

• Passing my comprehensive exams and becoming a doctoral candidate! 
• I've enjoyed precepting this past semester and teaching Princeton students. 
• Learning new recipes with Sam. 
• I interned this summer with the State Department's Office of the Historian and met some really excellent professionals in that office. 
• Having friends over at our apartment for parties, Advent, dinner, etc. 

Megan's lowlights: 

• The deaths of my cousin, Alyssa, and Sam's Grandma Jean. 
• The stress of Sam's job search. Under/unemployment just eats away at you. 

Southern Chile is heaven

Sam's highlights: 

• Returned to Chile for two weeks in May, roadtripped up and down the country, saw volcanoes, mountains, countless views of the ocean and made a pilgrimage to Pablo Neruda's house
• Went on a lot of walks in the woods near our house
• Read for pleasure and listened to a lot of music
• Went to the Jersey shore several times
• Met our nephew Pippin
• Insights gained from therapy
• Had fun in Uganda and Brazil on work trips

Sam's lowlights: 

• Being unemployed/underemployed for 8 months of the year
• Really rough contract job that ended poorly
• Being bored

If you made it this far, it must mean either that 1) you were bored and this was the next best thing to fill your time with, or 2) you must really love us. We are really grateful for the friends and family in our life who support us, love us, and put up with us. As this basically functions as our Christmas card for this year, I think it works to conclude with well wishes for 2020. The beginning of 2020 has certainly been tumultuous, and we hope for peace and wisdom for the rest of the year. We also hope that for whatever you are personally waiting or hoping for, that good things come to you. We hope to see more of you in 2020. Come visit!