About a month and a half after she first met Conrad Mapp, Lindsay McDaniel stood outside Swamp Restaurant wearing a black tube-top dress, waiting for him to arrive.
It was 2005, and Mapp was throwing a party. He had told her he'd pick her up on his bike.
Mapp hadn't seemed like the motorcycle type when they met at Grog House that summer, but McDaniel liked the UF law student enough to give him a chance.
Mapp pedaled up on a beach cruiser. He told her to hop on the handlebars.
In a split second, McDaniel decided to hold on tight and go along for the ride, no matter where it took her — to his house, to the altar or even to Eastern Europe.
Six and half years later, the two UF alumni are married and volunteering for the Peace Corps in Moldova.
About 7 percent of Peace Corps volunteers are married couples, said spokeswoman Erin Durney.
Mapp, 30, and McDaniel, 27, are not the only couple that started in Gainesville and ended up across the world for a 27-month term with the Peace Corps.
UF alumna Ilana Echevarria-Stewart and her husband Nate, a Gainesville middle school science teacher, work in Guyana. They have been together for about five years.
Both couples get to model equal-status marriages in places where balanced relationships typically aren't the standard.
For example, men in Moldova are generally steadfast in traditional gender roles. The fact that Mapp does his share of cleaning shocked McDaniel's married coworker.
They work together overseas just as they did in their College Park apartment behind University Avenue.
"One of the Peace Corps goals is to try to explain American values to other cultures," McDaniel said. "So it's kind of a neat thing that we bring to the table."
Married couples that apply to the Peace Corps are placed in foreign countries together, said spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson. The organization looks specifically for job assignments where the couples can live together.
For Mapp and McDaniel, this means going to separate jobs — he at a community development organization, she at a 25-person domestic violence shelter — but returning home to the same place.
There, they can cook Mapp's mom's famous fettuccine, complain about Moldova's single-digit temperatures and reminisce about Gator football games.
"It would be a completely different experience without somebody that you're married to and living with over here," Mapp said. "I don't know how the other people do it."
Being a Peace Corps volunteer is personally challenging, McDaniel said, so she loves sharing the experience with her husband.
"It keeps me really grounded," she said. "It's such an invaluable luxury."
In South America, the Stewarts feel similarly. Ilana, 26, is an administrative health promoter and Nate, 29, works with the education department.
When she needed an emergency appendectomy about a day after they arrived for training, he was with her.
He was with her as they journeyed to the nearest hospital — which meant canoeing, walking a half-mile over flooded land and driving a Land Rover through mud for an hour just to reach a paved highway.
He was with her as they stayed in Guyana's capital while she recovered with no painkillers stronger than Tylenol.
But he won't be with her for Valentine's Day today.
This week, Ilana is in a remote part of Guyana training new volunteers. She doesn't have phone or Internet access.
But that's no problem for them.
The two are always on the same page, Stewart said.
"We just love each other, man," he said. "We're just a really good match."
Moldova Peace Corps volunteers Lindsay McDaniel and Conrad Mapp
Moldova Peace Corps volunteers Lindsay McDaniel and Conrad Mapp
Guyana Peace Corps volunteers Nate Stewart and Ilana Echevarria-Stewart
