The last thing on Megan Luczak’s mind when she arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina last fall to study abroad was a boyfriend. Nor did the SESP senior expect to walk into a local cell phone company and be asked out a week later by the employee who had helped her. For the next four months, Luczak and Brai Medina, 24, were inseparable.

“I’ve never met someone who understands me or that I have as much fun with as I do him, even despite the language barrier, which I think is pretty incredible,” she says. “He speaks no English, so we have only ever communicated in Spanish.”

For the two of them, actions really do speak louder than words. Every day, Medina would leave his home in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and take a 20-minute bus ride, an hour-long train ride and then another half-hour bus ride to reach Luczak’s downtown neighborhood.

“I couldn’t believe that he was doing that, just to spend such a short amount of time with me and acted like it was no big deal,” she says laughing. “He’s very calculated in the things that he does in caring for me [with actions] I don’t think American guys would ever think about. There’s just not many boys like him.”

When Luczak left in December to return back to Northwestern, they decided to give a long distance relationship a shot. She always knew she would return to Buenos Aires, but it was just a matter of how and when.

“Not having a specific date in saying, ‘Okay, in three weeks I’m going to see you,’ was one of the biggest strains,” she says. “I had Skype where I could call landlines, so if he wasn’t in his house, I had no way of contacting him, and vice versa if I wasn’t at my computer when he was on.”

Once she left, Luczak realized how much she wanted to integrate into the Argentine culture and become fluent in the language. As soon as she completed her practicum quarter in the summer, Luczak decided to return to Buenos Aires to continue her studies at the local university and spend the fall of her senior year with Medina, an opportunity that she knows doesn’t come along often.

“The future is a very hard thing to talk about because he doesn’t speak English, so he would obviously have to learn, and getting a visa to come into America for an Argentine is very difficult and rejections are very frequent,” she says. “It’s such an uncertain future.”

As Luczak starts to talk about returning back to campus for the winter, her voice wavers. She understands the obstacles that stand in the way of their relationship. But she won’t give up hope.

“Ideally, we’d like to stay together, but sometimes I think we just don’t know how that’s possible,” she says. “If it’s meant to be, it will work itself out.”

Picking Up the Pieces

Each year 30 percent of the Northwestern student body studies abroad to become a “global citizen” of the world. When Gabe Haack traveled to Sevilla, Spain last fall, he learned one more lesson other than his required studies at the Universidad de Sevilla: Timing is everything.

Most nights the McCormick senior and his roommate would frequent a river to drink with friends, one of whom was Ana Pardo, 21, a student at the university. Despite the fact that they met so late in the program, Haack and Pardo hit it off.

“When I left, I didn’t feel totally comfortable saying she was my girlfriend because it happened very, very late in the study abroad process,” he admits. “We were thousands of miles apart, but all of my friends were supportive of [the relationship], rooting for the underdog kind of thing.”

When he returned to campus for winter quarter, Haack felt the pressure of having such a long distance relationship with a girl he had hardly spent any time with. The two remained in touch by Skyping nearly every afternoon when he got out of class.

“The time difference makes it a lot harder to talk when you’re not actively trying,” he says. “It takes up a lot of your time when you can’t just spend regular time with somebody else.”

The one thing that managed to keep them together was Haack’s decision to visit Pardo over spring break. But soon after he left, they realized the likelihood they would ever see each other again was pretty much slim to none.

“The last night we were together when I visited, we were pretty realistic,” he admits. “But after spring break, it was kind of like, ‘Well, I’m not going to see you again for 10 years.’ You’re not just going to fly to Spain for the weekend. It’s just unrealistic.”

Although their romance didn’t last, Haack regards their relationship as a good memory and has anything but feelings of animosity towards Pardo. If anything, their time together taught him what it takes to make a relationship work.

“In the end, it basically came down to the only way it was actually going to work is if one of us moved to where the other person is and that is way too big of a decision,” he says. “But I mean, you can’t help your feelings. You need to be honest from the beginning. Make sure you both know what’s on the table. Have an actual talk about the future, as scary as it is.”

Turkish Delight

Distance is hardly a foreign concept for Ipek Selek. A native of Istanbul, Turkey, the McCormick junior is nearly 5,000 miles away from friends and family. So when Selek was invited to a party her freshman year at the home of fellow Turk Temucin Adiguzel, a senior at the time, she was more than pleased to attend.

“We started dating soon after that and spent the rest of the year together,” she says.

The two decided to stay in a relationship when Temucin, 24, graduated in 2009. After taking a year off, and spending a few months in Evanston with Selek last fall and spring, he left to attend graduate school in St. Gallen, Switzerland. In fact, Temucin has been away for a longer period of time than he and Selek spent with each other that first year they met.

“It’s like you’re dating him, but not dating him at the same time because he’s not a part of your daily schedule,” she says. “When we’re together, we do everything with each other. It’s a huge change from being together to being apart.”

However, she isn’t discouraged about the distance, thanks to Blackberry Messenger and the fact that they both visit Turkey when they have time off. While most couples find it can be hard spending so much time apart, Selek is confident in their relationship.

“I feel like we have stayed the same since he’s left because we had a year together before,” she says. “We were together every day, so we basically know each other and we trust each other a lot. It wasn’t that hard to be separated trust wise because we both know that the other person won’t do anything.”

Even though Selek still has another year at Northwestern before she graduates, she remains positive about their future.

“We both don’t plan on coming back to the States,” she admits. “Even if we’re apart in Turkey, it’s not going to be longer than three hours. It will be much easier.”

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage?

Ever since Jennifer Goldberg was 12 years old, she has wanted to join the Peace Corps. So when the SESP senior was given the opportunity to study rural African health care in Stellenbosch, South Africa this past spring for Northwestern’s Program in Public Health, she jumped at the chance. Little did she know what else she would find.

“Having a relationship out of study abroad was definitely not one of my goals,” she says laughing. “I had just gotten out of a relationship before I left to go abroad and I was really looking forward to being single. I told myself I wouldn’t be involved with anyone for the rest of college.”

As adamant as she was about staying single, Goldberg knows you can’t control what happens in life and sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. Perhaps it was the fact that she was in South Africa, or maybe it was because Lionel Erasmus, 22, had been checking her out all night at a local bar, but she found herself attracted to the mysterious Afr
ikaner.

“I normally don’t introduce myself to strangers at bars, but I decided to strike up a conversation,” she says. “He called the next day to take me out for coffee and then we went on a date every night for the first two weeks. The more I talked to him, the more interested I became.”

The two had only been dating for a few months, when Goldberg’s program ended and she headed back to America for the summer. While she was reluctant at first about their relationship, whether or not she wanted to see other people as she started her senior year, now Goldberg couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. She and Erasmus Skype twice a day and understand that in order for the relationship to work, they need to be candid with each other.

“You have to really make an effort. It doesn’t feel like work to me because we just get along so well and I never feel like it’s a chore to call him,” she says. “We’ve been together for six months now and I’m still just as excited every time we talk. I realize that I met someone who really is the only one in the world for me. I’m not easily going to trade that up just because this part of our relationship is really hard.”

Whenever Goldberg speaks about Erasmus, her face lights up and it’s easy to see she’s happy, especially because he will be visiting her for five weeks in December. But what is the topic that’s most on her mind? The future.

“We both said that if we don’t see this relationship going anywhere, it’s not worth it. I think it’s important that we’ve talked about getting married,” she says. “No matter how uncomfortable or awkward a topic might be, it’s better to be upfront and candid about it. If you’re really into getting married or you’re really not into getting married, that’s something you’re partner should probably know when you’ve been dating for two or three months.”

For Goldberg, absence really does make the heart grow fonder and the 9,000 miles between the two has only made their relationship stronger.

“I never thought that I would have someone I wanted to be with right after I graduated,” she says. “But he said he’d follow me to whatever mud hut I wind up in the world. I appreciate that, somebody who will follow you to the ends of the earth, whether you’re living in a comfortable apartment in Evanston or sleeping on a dirt floor in Namibia.”