Love up north

It was in Pitt State that Ethan and Minna started a relationship that moved to Finland

Val Vita

How far would you go for love?

Ethan Silovsky crossed an ocean and moved to a different continent to be with the girl he loves.

Ethan and Minna Karjalainen are now living in Finland, but their story started in the Midwest.

He was a student a Pittsburg State, majoring in international business, and she was a Finnish exchange student who got here in August 2012 to spend one semester studying management. It was only two weeks before Minna left Pittsburg that they realized they were more than friends.

She left for Portugal to study for one more semester before going home, and the couple kept in touch. Despite the distance, they talked with each other more and more.

“It wasn’t before May 2013 that I actually started thinking that I really was in a long-distance relationship,” said Minna through Facebook. “My roommates in Portugal had realized it before me, though.”

Minna said everything went unbelievably smoothly. It was obviously hard to keep the relationship being so far away, but she says despite the challenge, they never considered ending it.

In the summer of 2013, Ethan traveled to Europe. The couple stayed together for a month, visiting Portugal, Italy and Croatia. That was when they realized they were truly in love.

“Every day I was finding out how much we were more and more alike and how much we worked almost perfectly together,” said Ethan. “I had never trusted anyone as much as I did her, and I told myself that must mean something.”

For Minna, it was their shared interests – their mutual love for the Harry Potter books, for example – and Ethan’s “goofiness” that made her fall in love with him.

“And no one has ever treated me as well as he does,” she said.

A semester after their Europe trip, Ethan, who considers himself a “very spontaneous guy,” made a decision that changed their lives. In January 2014, after he graduated from Pitt, he packed his bags and moved to Finland.

“No one really believed me until I actually left, then they were like, ‘Oh, he wasn’t lying,’” Ethan said.

It helped that Finland offers free education so Ethan could pursue his master’s degree instead of spending thousands of dollars in the United States.

“His decision made me so happy,” Minna said. “I personally know how big a thing it is to move abroad, to leave all your friends and family behind. So it made me realize that this guy must really like me, since he decided to move to Finland, of all places.”

Minna is working on her master’s thesis and he is looking for a job so he can become a permanent resident and enter into a master’s program. Meanwhile, he is learning the Finnish language and culture.

“After Ethan’s master’s program, who knows where we will live? We’ll see,” Minna said.

“From then, who knows? Life is an adventure,” Ethan agreed. 

This article will run on Kanza, the Pitsburg State University yearbook of 2013/2014 academic year.