Michael Bambula and Zeina El Habbal

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible”. This is how I felt on the evening of Thursday, March 20th, 2014. My (now) fiancée and I met at UCF in the atrium of the engineering building in March of 2014. I saw her sitting at a table studying (as engineering students do) and was captivated by her beauty. I decided I had to join her and get to know her. I made some small talk about where she was from (Lebanon) and where I was from (Germany). She was studying civil engineering and I was studying mechanical engineering. She had to leave for her evening class and I thought I would not get to see such a beautiful and interesting person again. I decided to follow her when I remembered my roommate, who was studying civil engineering, also had an evening class. I called him and said I was going to join him since that was my only chance to see Zeina again. When I walked into class I saw her and my heart was filled with joy. I sat through the entire class and waited until it was over. When Zeina got up and saw me she was surprised but asked me to walk with her to her car. I had to return to the engineering building and she offered to drop me off. When we arrived there she said a ridiculously silly pickup line from the series Friends, which went like “If you like my name, you should hear my number”. I could see her face blush as she realized the corniness of what she said. My heart was beating and I was thrilled to hear her number. That was the beginning of how we met, and for a long time Zeina thought it was fate that I went to class with my roommate that evening. Later, I had told her that I intentionally went to her class to see her. I will always be thankful to UCF for giving me the opportunity to find someone so special and amazing that I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with her.