[Kyle and Petya]

Kyle

A native of the state of California, Kyle waited until his family relocated to a small town in Connecticut to start acting like it. On his first day in Connecticut, all the students asked him whether, being from California, he was a surfer and a skater. Not knowing what else to do, he lied about surfing and started skateboarding, a decision which would have far greater influence on his adult life than he could have possibly imagined. Starting out as a Spanish major at Pomona College, Kyle began to notice the curious looking professors coming in and out of the buildings housing the English and Philosophy departments where he skated, and promptly changed his major to Literature on a hunch. After graduation, and still without a clue, he took a job that fulfilled his wildest thirteen-year-old fantasies, working for a skateboarding magazine back in San Francisco.

Still, the 9 to 5 life only convinced Kyle that he belonged back in academia, so he headed off to Philadelphia to begin a Ph.D. in philosophy at Villanova University. A few years later, and following a switch to Penn State, Kyle is months away (he promises!) from completing a dissertation on Immanuel Kant, and the relationship between imagination, aesthetics, and the foundations of political society.

Petya

Like all young women growing up in Bulgaria, Petya dreamed of living in the rural American South, eating biscuits and grits and sipping mint juleps while surrounded by young men in bowties. After finishing high school, she embarked on just such an adventure, heading to Sewanee, Tennessee to attend the University of the South. At Sewanee, Petya majored in political science, learned to make sweet tea while working at a coffeeshop, and started a blog that is still going strong today.

After graduation, Petya decided to continue her tour of small American college towns, this time crossing the Mason-Dixon line to pursue a Master’s degree in political science at Penn State University. In State College she learned the true glory of college football while studying the effects of internet technology on political participation. After seven years away, Petya returned to Bulgaria last June to work for a web development company in Sofia.

Kyle and Petya

Around 360 BCE, Plato wrote the Republic—a work that for perhaps the first time in the history of the West blurred the boundary between philosophy and politics—and thus unwittingly enabled Petya and Kyle to be introduced to each other over 2300 years later at Penn State. But it was not Plato alone who played the matchmaker; brought together in a dingy basement bar by the rousing tunes of Philbilly Cadillac they discovered that they shared, among other things, an astrological sign (Pisces), a fondness for Nina Simone, an unholy appreciation of the avocado, and the anguish of seasonal allergies.

Though they hit it off immediately, Petya and Kyle have each changed each other in ways that have defied all probability since they started dating two and a half years ago. Petya finally managed to get Kyle to renounce his longstanding Luddism, influencing him to adopt such cutting edge technologies as the cellphone and the personal computer. Now, having retired his typewriter, Kyle uses his computer almost daily for things like posting his photographs on flickr. Petya credits Kyle with having made her a healthier person for getting her to do things like start eating beans, give up smoking, and take up exercise. Today they live together in an apartment on Petya’s favorite street in downtown Sofia.