That’s amore! Here are two of the many Santa Clara lives joined in recent months. Share your stories and photos, too.
They met sophomore year, moving into Casa Italiana. (That’s a residence hall that celebrates Italian heritage and culture.) They both minored in Italian. They both decided to study abroad in Rome. From all this you might conclude that Adriana Asdourian ’10 and Justin Thomsen ’10 are of Italian ancestry. If you did, you’d be half right. Almost.
Adriana is half Italian and half Armenian. Justin is of Polish and Italian ancestry with some recent Danish influence (hence the Scandinavian surname). They wed two days after Christmas 2014 at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco’s North Beach district.
At SCU Adriana majored in economics with minors in international business and Italian. An art lover, she worked in the de Saisset Museum all four years.
Justin majored in philosophy and minored in English and Italian. As a senior and for a year after graduation, he collaborated with Professor Lawrence J. Nelson on a philosophy paper. After that he earned a master’s in philosophy at U.C. Irvine.
Bride and groom met the first day of sophomore year as they were moving into Casa Italiana. A mutual friend introduced them. They started hanging out in the same circle of friends and got together junior year just before studying abroad.
“Without ever speaking to each other about it, it turned out we’d chosen the same location, Rome,” she says.
The groom now works as director of data, analytics, and infrastructure at ABUV Media in San Francisco. The company builds content-rich websites. The bride is a talent-development manager for Sequoia Consulting Group, which advises growing tech companies on benefits, insurance, and HR matters.
Justin is now actually Justin Asdourian. Adriana says she has a strong connection to her family’s heritage and never planned on changing her last name. Justin wanted everyone in the family to share the same family name, so he volunteered to take hers.
As for their Italian roots, she says she’s been back to Italy once since they studied abroad, but he hasn’t. They’re planning to return together this summer.
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