India... I loved our sweet cooks and program workers who quickly turned into dear friends. I loved the village I worked in and the interviews I got to be a part of. I loved our sweet translators.I loved the rickshaw drivers on the corner, even when they were frustrating. I loved listening to our Telugu teachers try to explain a new word or philosophy. I loved a lot of things about India but more than anything else I love India for giving me my best friend. I love India for giving me a place to fall in love with the man of my dreams. I love India for giving me Kory.


Kory and I met sometime in January or February at a meeting for people who were interested in the India program, though most of us had already been accepted and were planning on attending. A couple weeks before the meeting I was hanging out with a group of friends and mentioned to somebody that I would be going to India in August. Out of nowhere, a boy I had met once or twice said "My friend Kory is going to India." "Oh, that's cool." I talked to him a little bit, asked him what this Kory boy looked like and told him I'd look for him in our meeting (to be polite, I thought there was no way this boy was going to be on the same 10-person program). I remembered his name and when our meeting came up we went around the room and introduced ourselves, but no Kory. A few minutes into the meeting a darling boy walked into the room, my first thought? "That would be so sweet if that was Kory." It was another few minutes before our professor asked him to introduce himself. "Hi, I'm Kory." I smiled a little bit, I had to talk to him. After class I waited for the right time and then stopped him. In the doorway. Not exactly the most convenient place. My plan was to ask him about the boy who had told me about him a few weeks before but just as I went to do so I realized I didn’t know the boy’s name. I was stumbling over my words. Asking him if I knew a Steven or a Spencer. He finally said “Oh Spencer Rushton?” “No that’s not it”. It was. We talked for a minute as other from the group squeezed through the doorway… “Are you heading down right now?” I told him I was and we talked our way down 8 floors in the elevator. We were getting ready to go our separate ways and I asked him how sure he was that he was going. “About 90 percent…a few things have to fall into place but I’m going.” He told me later that the second he walked out of the first meeting he had every intention of never going back. “So I’ll see you at the next meeting then?” “Yes you will.” “Nice to meet you Kory.” “It was nice to meet you too Mallory.” So that’s where it started, in the doorway of a conference room when I just couldn’t help but say hello. And again in the elevator when I talked to him through the 8 floor ride. And again when he told me I’d see him again. And again when I actually did. The weeks leading up to our next meeting were filled with crossed fingers as I hoped he would make the final decision to make the first payment and commit to going to India.


When the next meeting finally came around I was so happy to see him there, and committed to going. We took the 8 floor ride together afterwards and he hugged me outside before we left, it was only the second time we had ever talked but it seemed like the right thing to do. We hung out after every class from then on. We watched basketball games, we went to a concert and a documentary, we’d sit in my car and talk when I’d drive him home. I remember telling my mom that everything just felt so normal when I was with him, like we were old friends. On March 31st, we had our final pre-departure meeting and after wards he came with me to take care of a house I was watching. We stood on the back porch and he held me in his arms, shaking and nervous. After about an hour and a half he finally kissed me, I was shocked, and in heaven. He whispered/sang into my ear as we danced under the moonlight. It was perfect. I spent the next month getting to know everything I could about him and telling him everything he needed to know about me. We would stay up talking till 5 am only for him to leave for work at 6. I loved every minute I got to spend with him but somehow forgot to tell him. Sometime in May he ended things, not knowing how much I cared about him and not wanting to get hurt if it wasn’t progressing. We didn’t say what we were feeling and I was too scared to fight for it, so I let it go instead.


When we went to India I was nervous about going with a boy I once dated. I didn’t know what we would say or how we would act around each other. We talked in the months before we left, I saw him a couple times and we weren’t awkward around each other but it still made me nervous. On August 3rd I arrived in Delhi and got to a hotel with a few other girls in our group, Kory flew in that night at 2 am and I met him outside the hotel. We had no phones, we had no internet, we had no way to get in contact with each other but our timing was perfect and I stepped outside just as his cab pulled up. It was the first time we had seen each other in a month, we hugged and he looked relieved, neither of us knew if our timing would work out and he told me later he was planning on sleeping in the lobby. Over the months that followed we became best friends. Initially I was still upset with him because we never talked about what happened. Neither of us ever thought we would get back together so we completely let our guard down; I was my dorky self and never held my tongue. He would imitate our professors and get me laughing like nobody else, yet I emailed home every week and assured my mom that nothing was happening, but I had no idea. He got sick the second week we were there and we sat and talked for hours. We had nowhere to be, no one to talk to, we needed each other. I was at his house every day after those weeks of his sickness. He would play guitar for me, and we would joke about the funny things that would happen in India. We eventually talked about what had happened before and realized it was all a misunderstanding. We were thinking all the same things, we wanted the same things but we never expressed those things. We learned to tell each other everything and somewhere in the process of becoming best friends we fell in love too.


In October we had a fall break. He went to Nepal and I went to the Andaman Islands. It changed everything. It was the first time in 3 months that we had gone a day without seeing each other. I missed him the minute I left. At that point we knew we wanted to get married but neither of us had said it. One morning we woke up at 6 am so we could talk. He read me a journal entry he had written that basically told me he loved me and that he wanted to marry me. The next week we had to spend apart was gruesome. I got home before he did and discovered a sweet scavenger hunt he had left in my room with the sweetest love letter I’ve ever seen at the end. I got home Saturday, he got home Monday and on that Wednesday we said I love you. We couldn’t have gone another minute without saying it. People always tease us and talk about how glamorous it sounds…falling in love in India. We laugh, knowing that India is far from glamorous and anything but clean. Kory has seen me at my worst, worse than my worst. He has seen me drenched in sweat from the hundred degree humid Indian sun. He saw me every morning before breakfast still in my nightgown with my hair on top of my head and no make-up on. He laughed at my tar-blackened feet from walking around India shoeless. He has seen me in the most unflattering clothes I will ever wear in my life. He has seen me sick. He has seen me grouchy and tired. We have seen each other in every un-glamorous situation you can imagine but none of it changes a thing. He is my best friend and the man of my dreams; we talk all the time about how happy we are that we didn’t have to compromise on anything. Every day I fall a little bit more in love. The perfect, darling, adorable kind of love that you dream about as a little girl. I know this doesn’t mean that everything else is right in the world but it certainly feels that way. Even on the hardest, craziest days my life is bliss... because I have him and he has me and neither of us are going anywhere.