We met in 1981. I was a volunteer English language tutor for a refugee resettlement program in San Francisco and Arkady and his family had recently arrived from the former Soviet Union. I initially was matched with his older sister and her daughter. Once a week, I visited them at their apartment for an hour of tea and conversation. One afternoon, Arkady was at the apartment when I arrived and soon he was joining us regularly. He didn't say very much as he was just starting to learn English by watching Saturday morning cartoons and episodes of MASH. A few months later when he found his first job, we discovered that we worked in the same building downtown and we began meeting for lunch and seeing each other outside of work. Four years later, a planned vacation trip to Hawaii turned into a wedding and honeymoon there.
