Chinese wedding

Tonight we got to experience our first Chinese wedding!!! It was… very very very very very very different. They call it a wedding party, which is exactly what it is! A huge party. When we got there everyone was sitting at tables eating food and the bride and groom were at the front taking the presents as you walk in and greeting guests. We sat down and then things started to get interesting. The music was BLARING throughout the entire wedding so keep that in mind. Everything went dark except for a spotlight on the groom who ran down the aisle holding the bouquet. The person conducting the “ceremony” was a girl who basically just seemed like a talk show host or something. She and the groom yelled some stuff then the groom ran back down the aisle where he asked the bride if she would marry him. Then she said yes and there were lots of cheers and horns blowing while the music was still blasting and the microphone kept making that terrible screeching noise and I felt like I was going to go deaf. Then they ran down the aisle together and they exchanged rings and lit fireworks (the fountain ones cause this was inside) and did some other stuff I don’t understand. I really don’t understand anything else that went on after that. All I know is there was lots of laughing and terrible singing and loud loud loud everything. Haha it was fun though! It was definitely VERY different than our weddings in America. Just take the sacred and fancy out of wedding and there ya go! And DEFINITELY in no way was the bride the center of everything like in America. Haha It was fun though!

When the lights went out the first time when the groom ran down the aisle the only light for a while was the spotlight and the light from the disco ball and stuff. So we were basically eating in almost the dark. In that time I ate pigs ear, tiny fish, and nasty pigs leg without knowing it. After those three things I just stopped eating until the lights came on. Then I saw a turtle on the table too. I didn’t try that. The pigs ear was enough for me. Yuck yuck yuck.

I can’t get over the shrimp here. I love shrimp. It is SO delicious. But I just can’t handle the eyes!!! I can tear apart a crab and eat other fish with eyes on it but I can’t eat the shrimp. I just can’t do it. It is too yucky tearing off the head with those big black eyes and then the long antenna things. Ewwww. I just can’t get used to it. The school has shrimp for lunch a lot and they are always at fancy dinners. Today for lunch we had shrimp, rice and tofu which had broccoli in it too. All I ate was the rice and broccoli. Haha

Tonight I was looking in the “Downloads” folder on my computer and found all of the pictures that Jay has sent me of Thomas that I couldn’t ever figure out how to save. They have just been staying in my email. I didn’t realize that when I downloaded them they were saving on my computer! So that was a happy moment when I found 114 pictures of Thomas. He is SO CUTE I seriously CAN’T stand how cute he is! I looked at the pictures over and over and over again. He is just so cute. I have the CUTEST nephew. He is so cute.

Here is a picture of how gross the shrimp are... they are even grosser in real life!

the end of our Xian trip

I still have to finish talking about our Xian trip! On Sunday night we went biking on the City Wall in Xian. It was one of my very favorite parts of the whole trip. It was seriously SO amazing. We rode tandom bikes, which was my first time ever doing that. Mekena and I rode on one together. At first we had a really difficult time with it. Haha It didn’t help that they were really really old bikes too. We got the hang of it after a while though and it was so much fun. It was dark out and the wall was all lit up and the city surrounding the whole wall was lit up and everything was so beautiful. There were even floating lanterns in the sky. It was all so magical and beautiful and probably my favorite part of the whole trip along with the Terra-cotta Warriors. It was just so amazing!!! We were biking on a wall built in the Tang Dynasty!!! Seriously, amazing.

Not too much else happened. We spent the next morning souvenier shopping on the dreariest day of my life I feel like. The weather was nasty. I had such a fun time in Xian though! It really was such a good week.

On Tuesday we got back at about noon after a really long train ride. I had to teach my fifth grade class that afternoon and didn’t have any idea of what I was going to teach so I taught them Happy Birthday. We spent the whole class making birthday cards for Sara since it was her birthday last week and I taught them the Happy Birthday song. It was basically a lesson about Sara. Haha

Wednesday night we went over to Marie and Mekena’s apartment and we all went to Tai Chi together! It was the first time ever that I have done Tai Chi. We all loved it! It was so fun and really hilarious. All of the Chinese people were trying to help us do it and there was a crowd of people who stopped to watch. Apparently I am pretty good at doing Tai Chi though because everyone kept complimenting on how good I was doing. J

Yesterday we watched conference finally! I had already watched most of it but it was fun to watch it with everyone together. We tried to have an American breakfast, so we made French toast! We can’t find butter anywhere here so we used oil instead which gave it a Chinese taste. We also couldn’t find syrup so we had cream cheese and strawberry jam on it. We also had lots of fruit and it was so delicious! For lunch we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which tasted amazing as well. J Conference was so so so so so so so amazing. I love it so much.