Since a lot has happened, I'll just do a few highlights.
Sadie and I went to Hefei together for a weekend. Sadie lived in a city near there when she was in China and spent weekends there all the time. We only had time to go for one night, but it was worth it. Hefei is SUPER dirty but we made friends with the sweetest girl who showed us around and took us out to eat.
We went fishing with one of our friends. Chinese fishing is really different because they don't use a reel. Instead they just make the string long enough to reach out into the water a bit while being short enough to handle. They use re-hydrated ground up shrimp shells as bait and apparently it's better than marshmallows because we went for 1 1/2 hours and we caught more than 10 fish. Sadie even caught two, though the first one got away because she yanked the pole so hard the fish flew up and hit the roof before falling off the hook and back into the water. It was a lot of fun and required less patience. Though I do like fishing in America still and I still dream of going ice fishing someday. (I know! Everyone says it's not that fun, but I just really want to try it!)
We also spent a weekend in Shanghai so Sadie could visit a friend who lives there. We tried to do a little Christmas shopping and stayed in a great hostel in the center of tourist central. We also got to visit the Shanghai branch which was so nice especially since we got to watch the primary program.
Kelli decided to come to visit us in China! YEAH!!! She's coming next week on Tuesday, but we won't see her until Thursday (Thanksgiving) and then she'll go with us to Nanjing on Saturday for Thanksgiving dinner with the branch. The next weekend, we are going to Suzhou together. It'll be so fun to show her around and let her experience the China we love so much.
I FINALLY got to go to a Chinese wedding yesterday. AMAZING! Also a little strange. One of the young teachers here invited us to come with all the other teachers at the school. After school got out, there was a big bus waiting near the gate. We got on with all the other teachers and it drove to the restaurant. When we got there, most everyone was already sitting down, and by most everyone I mean 400-500 Chinese people. We were sitting at some tables near the front so we had to walk through hords of tables full of staring people. We don't really blend in here.
The tables already had food on them so we sat and basically started eating. The wedding ceremony happened while people ate and only semi-paid attention. It wasn't quiet and there weren't many sentiments.Also, I didn't understand anything that happened, but they looked happy together. They also had an MC sort of guy that announced everything. After the wedding part was over, the food just kept coming and they had entertainers there to perform. Some dancing girls in belly shirts, a singing woman who turned out to be a man, and a contortionist. They had a hula hopping contest and Sadie won a big stuffed baby Mickey Mouse. There were lots of toasts and I don't know how many times we stood because someone came to our table to toast us, but it was a lot, and I drank a lot of coconut milk stuff.
One of Yangzhong's specialties is puffer fish and what would a Yangzhong wedding be without it? It was good, but tasted like most other fish I've tried. Then there was the whole crab on my plate that I had to figure out how to eat. Lucky for me, a Chinese person helped me and made me knowingly eat the brain. Although it tasted fine, it was just a bit uncomfortable to think about. Other dishes included chicken feet, possibly pigs head though I can't be sure, whole shrimp. When the night was over, our table had layers on layers of food sitting in the middle and we didn't even eat half of it, though some other tables made much better progress than us. It never ceases to amaze me about how much these people can eat.
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| That's the guy. He really has a beautiful voice. |
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