Three Weddings and a Trip to Kyrgyzstan

By Andrew Mundt,

Wolf House ('00-'02) & Kingman Hall ('03-'04)

Allie Cary (Wolf, ‘00-‘02) and I first met when we moved into Wolf House in the Fall of 2000. We soon found ourselves talking late into the night on the 3rd floor staircase, glad that we had found a friend. Several years later when I was living my final year in Kingman Hall, we had our first wedding ceremony during a house celebration, the Reverend Jordan Pelot-Whitcomb (now Alumni Coordinator) presiding.

After graduation, Allie and I left the co-ops, which had become our home, and moved down to San Diego. A year later, we applied to the Peace Corps, which required that we get married again, this time legally, in order to stay together during our service. We readily agreed, knowing it would happen sooner or later. Little did we know, but the Peace Corps had changed protocol and now required couples to officially tie the knot six months prior to service. At 11am one fateful Friday, our recruiter called and told us to get married immediately to meet the departure deadline. That afternoon found us giggling through our vows in the county administration office. We spent the weekend explaining what happened to our flabbergasted parents.

With six months to go, Allie managed to plan a memorable wedding service—one of which our families would approve. We invited the eighty most important people in our lives, including a good number of our co-op friends. We didn’t have enough money to invite everyone but even still, a few adventurous Kingmanites heard about the ceremony, hopped in a car, and drove down to join us on our wedding day. My old roommate, who was among the wedding crashers, blew the guests away with a fantastic toast and the older guests remarked that we were lucky to find such people in our lives. We got married the third time surrounded by the people we loved and who loved us in return.

Allie and I boarded a plane to Kyrgyzstan a month after the wedding service, and have been in Kyrgyzstan for an educational eighteen

months; we have learned about cultural norms, social struggles, and ourselves. The Kyrgyz people are proud of their country, culture, and heritage, though the country struggles to reclaim its identity after so many decades as a part of the Soviet Union. At times it is frustrating to witness the conflict between social progress and fundamentalism. Despite these cultural setbacks, Allie and I have witnessed communities in Kyrgyzstan founded on trust and reciprocity, just as we had witnessed when living in the co-ops.