Most people think I am in Philadelphia right now. Most people are wrong. When I bought my plane ticket three weeks ago the only person who knew about it was my friend Piko. He was the first one in on the grandest deception of my life. Now only a handful of people know what I am really up to.

I suppose it all started one sunny afternoon in early August. "She has a brideprice, you know", my friend Shi told me. "Her dad said that whatever guy wants to marry Kristen is going to have to build him a canoe. So you'd better start working."

At the time my romantic involvement with Kristen had only existed for a day or two. We had taken classes together all summer and hung out a few times, though mostly for strictly academic purposes. And although Kristen is one of those women that when you see for the fist time you think, "wow... she is positively stunning", I did not think of her as anything more than a friend. I wasn't looking for a relationship. And besides, I thougt it was a bit cliche to go for the blonde haired blue eyed beauty. So I spent most of the summer with a deep respect and admiration for her kindness and her character, though I never thought to pursue anything more than that.

One of our classes, Principles of Language Survey, afforded us the opportunity for a different kind of meeting. With a huge term paper on a people group of our choice, we decided to work together because we would both be working in Southeast Asia in the future anyway. (For the record, it was Kristen who asked me if I wanted to work on the project together.) The last two weeks of the summer semester were spent with us together for most waking hours, books all around but most of the time learning more about each other than linguistics or people groups.

One night in particular I remember pulling a late night "working" on "the project" with Kristen and having more fun than I thought possible. I walked her back to her room, said goodnight, and then walked through the night back to my house thinking, "it's all over." There was nothing I could do about it. I really really liked Kristen. I didn't want to stop working with her.