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Published: October 25th 2011
Joyce and Buddha
Just outside of the wedding banquet room Joyce got personal with the resident statue...note the wedding couple on the left side of the photo. Sigh. Could it really be that I have only 13 more days in my beautiful Chinese adventure? Well, 13 days in Xiamen, more or less. I will stay a couple of days after work to pack up and say my good-byes. Then it's off to Beijing to finish my amazing adventure (s).
Life has settled into a routine here.....work on Friday afternoons through the evenings till 8:30, then all day Saturday till 5:40 and also Sunday mornings 8:30 till noon. Then another class again on Monday night from 7-8:30. Tuesdays-Thursdays are adventure days! LOL I go to spin classes twice per week and do run/walk at least one other day of the week. Jim, Diane and I and sometimes more of us, lol, go mountain climbing on Friday mornings. Joyce and I pick up groceries and shop on our days off. Sometimes we are so tired we spend the whole morning in our apartment in our pj's. LOL I think it's the heat. AND, speaking of the heat, it had been cooling down and I was happier, but it seems, and I can't believe I am going to write this, but that it is back to OVEN as of today with
Cold Appetizers
What the appies looked like for the wedding feast. really, really high humidity and I FREAKING HATE THAT! ARGHHH! I was so happy to be wearing jeans and some longer sleeved and more importantly some DIFFERENT pieces of clothing that I had not worn for at least a few months. BUT today is so damn hot and humid, going up to 34 again today that I was sweating just by hanging up laundry. The last couple of days I have been able to wear my jeans, which are definately fitting loosely. It had cooled off enough that jeans were okay and I didn't sweat my face off--it was about 25 and I was wearing jeans and was not too hot! OMG. I must be getting used to the heat! That is definately weird for moi! LOL One of the Teaching assistants mentioned that I seemed happier and was looking better. I said, "Yes, that's true! I am cooler and I can wear make-up, do my hair and actually feel good without feeling like I am melting! LMAO!" I am missing my extensive wardrobe, shoes, and purses. It's hard being a girly girl when you have only a few of the same things to choose from time and time again.
Cigarettes?
To ensure you enjoyed your wedding feast, even cigarettes were provided. Ricardo, if you are reading this, I brought you back a package, that is, if you are still smoking! LOL Some of my clothing is looking a bit worse for wear, having worn and worn and worn it and washed and washed and washed it. Some of these items of clothing, however, may get left behind as I have little (read nada) desire to wear them again having worn them SOOOOO often over this past 12 weeks. AND, I have learned that I can wear unironed cotten but I HATE IT! I HATE IT! Wearing unironed clothing makes me feel so, so slobby. UGH. Oh well, I have done it for this long, but when I return home, I'm going to dive into a pile of ironing very happily! YAY! Ironing! Whoo-hoo! Never thought I'd be writing that in a million years! LOL
This last 2 weeks has been a whirlwind. Last Sunday evening we were invited to a wedding. One of our office colleagues, Wendy, was getting married. We were invited on Sunday morning for the event that evening. WOW! We were excited but also in a tizzy! What do we wear? I, personally, did not feel I had lovely enough clothes. I went shopping and came up with some shoes that would work with my pretty sundress....and broke
Traditional Dress
The bride, Wendy, changed into a traditionally red wedding dress to enjoy the rest of her banquet. down and bought a blow dryer to do my hair with! That was the best I could do under the circumstances! LOL
At 6:30 all of the teachers gathered at the school and we all prepared our wedding gifts of money or huang bo. In China one presents the couple with the gift of money. I place 200 Yuan, which is about 34ish Canadian dollars, into a small, ornate, red envelope upon which I wrote my congratulations in English and had James, our school's founder, translate my congratulatory message into Chinese. I am told that 1-200 yuan is an appropriate gift if you are not terribly familiar with the couple. Joyce and I rode in James' mercedes over to the hotel where the reception was being held. At the doors, we were met by the very beautiful bride in her white wedding gown, her groom looking very handsome beside her in his suit. They could have been any Canadian couple. In the banquet room we sat in a large circular table of 9 people. On the centre lazy Susan were jugs of white and red wine, packages of cigarettes and 2 litre bottles of pop and various accoutrements to the
Oo-la-la shoes
My new shoes...cost only about $45ish Cdn dollars. The women's shoes in China are the most beautiful I've ever seen! Too bad I don't fit most of them..I take the biggest size....45. Many shoes don't come that big. Yikes! LMAO. BTW only size 8-8.5 at home. meal to come. We sat with our young friend Hank who had left Tianjiao to work at Dell early into our stay. He had helped Diane do the hotpot supper at her place last month! Hank was one of the co-master of ceremonies. The bride's cousin was acting with him. We didn't witness an actual wedding ceremony, but it was certainly interesting to me that the couple had been married earlier in a traditional ceremony, but was having a western style reception and banquet. The event started with all eyes turning towards us as we entered the reception. Seems my blonde hair has the Chinese all ga-ga! To be fair, I am only the 3rd blonde person, I've seen here the whole time I've been here, and all the blondes were female, btw. People pointed and smiled at me throughout the reception. They were not at all unfriendly, and by now I am quite used to it. If we have a chance to speak often they will comment upon my eyes, how they like the blue/green colour. I love that they think I'm exotic! One of our male colleagues is told all the time he looks like a movie star!
Pre-Dinner ceremonies
Shot of centre stage and all the activity before the banquet started. Jim, my climbing buddy, the one I call the mountain goat, says he's going to be depressed when he goes home to Canada as, in his words, "Nobody pays any attention to me at home!" LOL!
They started the festivities with a rousing version of "If you're Happy and You know it" (sung in Chinese, of course) lol, definately the first time I'd hear heard THAT sung at a wedding, but hey! They brought the fathers up to make speeches about their children's new spouses, and there were tears by the bride, just like at home, and then after some good-natured ribbing about the wife being the one in charge of the money and the new husband doing all the housework, the bride then threw her bouquet into a throng of single wedding guests, male AND female....and it was caught by a very exuberant young man, who was very pleased it was now his! LMAO! No garter was thrown. The bride and groom then cut their cake and fed each other pieces of it (None was shared with the guests and this was a MAJOR disappointment for me, let me say, I LOVE cake!) and then it was time to
MMMMM Great food!
Diane and Hank enjoying the feast. It was really, really delicious! eat! WOW! What an amazing feast we had! OMG at least 10 courses were served to us including cold appetizers and then soup and then hot dishes which just came and came and came including abalone, which is VERY expensive in China and one dish, which actually turned out to be my favourite, started out looking like a mass of tiny black maggots! I am NOT kidding, I was cringing! My friend/colleague Diane said when it arrived at the table, "What's this? Black maggots?" but the scary-looking dish turned out to be an expensive type of gelatinous black rice, covering some very tasty roasted chunks of pork. The rice, when I first put it into my mouth, tasted like turkey stuffing! I am not really a stuffing person, if you know me, you know that I make meat stuffing for my turkey, but this was really delish! Mmmmm. I was glad that I got over my fear of the way it looked enough to taste it because it was very, very good. After eating way too much, then the toasting started. I am not spelling this right, but "Gambay" is the Chinese "salut" or "cheers". BUT, but, BIG but when
Wedding Cake
It was a fake except for the top layer. We didn't get any! WAH! :( the Chinese say "Gambay" to you, it means that you have to drink your WHOLE glass of liquor down. ALL of it. And then show them the glass is empty. Needless to say, there were quite a few intoxicated people by evening's end. There was no dancing! Just a lot of visiting and drinking. We learned from the bride after that we'd used 5 times the liquor they'd budgeted for! We Canadians were horriffied about how much we'd enjoyed ourselves and the wine until we were told that it was an honour for that much liquor to be consumed because to the Chinese bride and groom that meant that their guests had enjoyed their wedding immensely! And that was true! LOL Whew. Cultural differences. I myself definately had a self-induced head-ache the next day. After the wedding a bunch of us headed out to a club and danced and drank some more. We had a great time. But I paid for it the next day! OUCH! LOL No regrets!
This week I've had 2 Chinese people comment that I am beautiful and....get ready for this........FAT. OUCH! Ouch, ouch, ouch. OMG! Pffft. That is the sound of my ego deflating right
Bride and her family
Wendy and her family. James Zhan, our Tianjiao founder is the man in the middle of the picture in the navy blue shirt/tan pants. in front of you! LMAO. NICE. Really, nice. Neither person was being nasty--it was like this simple statement about how different I am from them--not a personal criticism or affront. WOW! This after losing 3 belt sizes. Yikes. If I was going to stay I'd have to work on getting UBER svelte. And I am getting smaller......my shorts literally fall off without my belt. I am going to enjoy getting back to being just another face in the crowd and not someone that people stare at! And I need a hair intervention SO badly. LOL I keep telling myself to be patient. I am afraid of entering a Chinese salon and asking for some colour (they don't seem to do blonde here at ALL) and a cut since my vocabulary consists of a few numbers, please, thanks, no, no way, and some food items! Maybe I should do what my friend Rich suggested and just get myself an "Annie Lennox" and be done with it! LOL Mmmmmmmmmm, then again, maybe NOT! LOL I sorely wished I had not cut my hair before I came as it turned out to be a very bad decision strategically. It would have been so
Hello!
Teacher Allan and a young wedding guest! much easier to just pull it back or clip it up long instead of dealing with it like this. But I am almost done here and will head back home and return myself to normalcy and think fondly of my time here even if I was scary-looking! After speaking with Diane today I may try a salon at the California Mall tomorrow that she suggested. She went in yesterday and had a cut she liked and the fellow spoke GOOD English. So, maybe tomorrow is nails and hair day.
I should relate a funny story about a bus ride Joyce and I took last time we went to the fabric market. We hopped on a bus near our home that we don't usually take, thinking that it would take us down the road to where we'd get off to walk the rest of the way. Well. We got a little suprise. We went about 2 blocks down the main drag and then the bus turned the corner and went right. LMAO! Our eyes met and as we drove further and further away from the main street we needed to be on, and I said to Joyce, "Okay Joyce, we have
Gambaying!
Me and Luna in full Gambay mode! Yikes! Jim and Hank in lower right. This is right before we left to go dancing. 2 choices. We can get off at the next stop and walk a LONG way to the fabric market. OR, we can ride this bus and see where it takes us. Have an adventure." We stayed on the bus. And stayed and stayed. Next thing you know, we'd pulled into the terminal. By then, or course, we were the only 2 fools left ON the thing, except for the driver, who, upon pulling into the terminal and extinguishing the engine, turned around to look at the 2 dumb white ladies whose eyes were like saucers. She said, in Chinese ( I am making this up since I have only 40 Chinese words in my vocabulary) "WTF! Why are you two idiots doing STILL on this bus? This is the end of the line for this thing. Get OFF!" Ok, so now what? We didn't know where we were and we had no phone either. We disembarked giggling at our own stupidity and thinking of Diane's story about her and Rich having a similar experience last year in Xiamen but late at night and in the dark. NOT funny. At least it was afternoon and full daylight for us. Yup. We
Hallowe'en?
LOL, although very much a North American phenomenon, it is catching on here a bit! We were surprised, on one of our many shopping trips last week, to see this sign in the California mall! We are teaching our kids about it at Tianjiao! giggled and giggled like 2 little girls and decided to go to the nearest bus stop and try to go back to where we'd come from. We boarded a number 26 bus. We rode it. We got off on the main street quite far from the fabric market. We walked and walked and walked. It was good for us. At least that is what we told ourselves as we trudged. HA! JUST as we were crossing the street to head to where we needed to go, what should we see pulling up? The number 26 bus letting people off just where we were standing right then. *Groan*. Dummies. OMG. We could have stayed on that bus instead of getting off and walking our asses off. LMAO! It was good for us. That's what we told ourselves. And we all know that all's well that end's well.
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food
the food looks awesome.