The Wedding Festivities

I was so excited to see my parents that I barely slept the night before the flight to Beijing. I didn't sleep on the flight at all. Howie and I were picked up at the airport by his friend's dad, Mr. Jia. We were then driven to the hotel. As we were hauling our bags out of the car my parents came out of the hotel. They had been up for hours and were sitting the in lobby reading. During hugs I introduced Howie and there were more hugs. Before meeting my parents Howie had asked me if he should hug my parents or shake their hands. I said hug my mom but my dad I'm not so sure. Turned out it didn't matter. As my dad said later, "A hug just felt like the right thing."

After settling in we headed out. I honestly can't remember what we did everyday after that but we did a lot in the little time we had in Beijing. If I remember right we were only there for 2 full days. During those days we did a lot of tourist stuff. We went to the Great Wall (JuYongGuan pass) where Howie and I put a padlock on a chain on the wall and threw the key over the wall, a little known tradition here to show never ending love.
We also went to Tian'anmen Square, Forbidden City, Ming Tombs, Olympic Village, and the Dali Lama Temple. We also had Peking Duck, it's quite tasty.

Here are the photos from Beijing. And one more album.

After going through Beijing we took the train (and introduced my parents to the Chinese queuing system) to Shenyang then a bus to Fushun where Howie's dad met us. The next couple days were spent touring Hada and meeting different family members. Howie also introduced me to his grandparents. We went to their grave where we lit cigarettes for them, poured Baijiu on the grave, and placing fruit near the gravestone. Some of Howie's friends from Dalian and Anshan came to town for the wedding as well.

You can see pictures from Hada here.

Now the day of the wedding... I woke up at 4:00 am to take a shower and wait for the hair/makeup girl to show up at about 5:00 am. It took nearly 2 hours for my hair and makeup to get done. A short while later the hotel room that I was staying at with my parents was filled with family and friends. I put on traditional Chinese clothes and sat on the bed to wait for Howie. He came shortly after I was all ready. He arrived on a horse followed by the sedan chair that I was going to ride in to Howie's house. When he got to the room ChungAi (Howie's best friend's girlfriend/my Maid of Honor) let Howie in after he knocked for what seemed forever. He kept knocking on the door and no one was moving. I tried to get up to open the door before I was told to sit down. Howie entered the room and we sat on the bed and started taking pictures. Most of the wedding day was posed for the cameramen. We took pictures on the bed, with my parents, Howie serving coffee to my parents, Howie and I drinking coffee together, Howie putting my shoes on for me, Howie and I bowing to each other and so on.

After all these pictures were taken and the cameramen were satisfied I was veiled and led down 3 flights of stairs to my sedan chair. Once there more pictures were taken. Then we were off. I was carried behind Howie, who was riding a horse. I knew we were close to the house when I heard hundreds of firecrackers and big boom fireworks going off. When we arrived I was helped out of the chair and led to a small platform. I stood on this, still veiled, and was fed a piece of candy by Howie's mother. I then fed a piece of candy to her. Then she gave me a large red envelope of money. I was now allowed to enter their house as their new daughter. But on the way I had to step over a stove of hot coals. Once in the house I sat on their bed where his mother gave me a cup of Pepsi and asked me if it was sweet. I had to respond with, "Yes, it's sweet." I still don't know why. Then I was unveiled. We took a bunch of family pictures before I was told to change to my white wedding gown.

Once in the white gown with red heels, Howie and I fed each other noodles and poached eggs. We were then ushered out the front door to the car that was waiting to take us to the restaurant. On the way, there were more fireworks and lots of confetti cannons. We rode in the car to the restaurant after we drove around the tiny town a bit. Once at the restaurant I had to scoot out of the car and take more pictures with the car. (Pretty cheesy if you ask me.) We then had more confetti cannons. When we stepped into the restaurant there were tons of people there and the floor was covered with sunflower seed shells. We were then ushered into the lobby of the hotel (it's one huge building built together). There we sat and talked to the announcer and waited for the appropriate time to go in to start the ceremony. (Howie told me that some of the old ladies would be looking at their watches to make sure we started at an auspicious time.)

When we were allowed to enter, Dad walked me for a short bit and gave me to Howie. Dad didn't hug me but he hugged Howie! lol. Howie's parents were introduced, my parents were introduced then Howie and I walked down the aisle to the stage while on both sides of us fireworks went off.

Once on stage we started the ceremony. There was a lot of talking that I didn't understand. At one point I was asked to say hello to everyone. Howie expected me to say it in Chinese but at this point I couldn't remember how to say even one word in Chinese. So I said, "Hello" in English but the microphone stayed in front of my face to I added, "Everybody." That is what I was told to say so I said it. I feel dumb now thinking of that! During the ceremony we lit the unity candle, had a prayer, Dad gave a blessing, and Howie's dad spoke. The mayor also spoke a bit which supposedly makes the wedding official. We cut a cake and poured wine into a wine glass tower. We were then told to drink from these glasses. (The night before we checked out the dining hall to make sure everything was okay where I noticed the glasses were disgusting and made sure that we weren't going to have to drink out of them. Howie said we wouldn't be drinking from them. I guess that plan was changed without us knowing until we had to drink from these disgusting glasses.) When the ceremony was done Howie and I walked out (or he practically carried me out because my feet hurt so bad from the shoes I was wearing).

I then changed into my third and final dress. Another red dress but not so traditional. We then returned to the dining hall where we greeted the guests that had remained there (originally there were 500 guests, by the time we came back only about 100 remained). I then began my bridely duty of lighting cigarettes for the men, pinning flowers in the old women's hair, and unwrapping candy and feeding it to other women and some men. Finally, I thought it was done when we got to the last table and had taken a few more photos with random people inside and out.

I was wrong again. We still had staged photos to take with just the parents. We went to our own private room to have lunch where I was given another red envelope of money, lit cigarettes for Howie's parents, Howie light cigarettes for mine, and I fed a fish eye to Howie's mother. After a few more shots of drinking and toasting, we were done. Actually done. The cameramen left, the horrible announcer left and we could eat. Of course we had some other family members come in to drink with us but it was much more laid back than earlier.

When it was all said and done I went to my parents' room to take a shower and get all the make up and hairspray off of me, not to mention all the horrible confetti that was stuck to me and in my hair.

I spent the afternoon watching TV with my mom while Dad took a nap and Howie spent time with his friends. That evening his friends, my parents, Howie and I, and Howie's dad went to dinner. After the dinner Howie's friends and he and I went to KTV. We finally went to Howie's parents' to sleep.

The day started at 4:00 am and didn't finish until about 2:00 am.

You can see all the pictures of the ceremony here.
Here.
Here.
And here.

After the wedding festivities, my parents came to Dalian where we showed them what we could while they were here. I'm afraid it wasn't a very relaxing visit for them.

Here are the photos from Dalian.

The Wedding is Coming

My wedding is about one week away. It will be a traditional Chinese wedding with a few Western traditions thrown it. At this point I don't really know what is going to happen. I know they basic outline but that's about it.

Many people keep asking me if I'm excited. Well, yes I am. But at the same time I mostly just want to get it over with. It has been months of questions and being completely in the dark at times. I can't speak with my future in-laws because of the language barrier. They are the ones planning the wedding. It's very frustrating. Right now I plan to just show up and do what I'm told until it's over. That probably sounds horrible but at this point I don't know what else I can do.

On another note... My parents will be here tomorrow night! I won't actually get to see them until Saturday morning but they will be in the same country as me in about 27 hours! I will meet them in Beijing and we'll spend a couple days there before heading to Howie's parents' house.

I have only two more days of work before I have more than a week off. I can't wait!

Oink Oink

It feels like SARS all over again. Yet again I am in China during a worldwide outbreak of a potentially deadly illness. During SARS the entire country was shut down for a long time. We were not permitted to leave the campus I was living at. If we did leave (I was classified as a teacher and could usually get out and back in), it was iffy if a store or bar or whatever would be open. I was not allowed on a train to go home from Beijing because my skin was hot (duh! I had a horrible sunburn).

This time, however, it's N1H1. Or as it's referred to by my students "The Pig Ill". As senior teacher at my job I am required to keep the other foreign teachers up to date as well as receiving hundreds of pointless emails from my manager or the head office of the corporation. Last week I received another email filled with tons of information that does not necessarily pertain to me. This one was about N1H1 preparedness.

According to this email the school I'm working for is cracking down on health. Rooms, toys, doorknobs, and chairs must be sprayed down with sanitizer after each class. Parents are not allowed in the school. And antibacterial soap must be placed next to the sink in the bathroom.

It was nice not to have a ton of parents in the hallways during our classes. (The parents talk loudly in the hall, answer their phones, and peek in the classroom to make sure the teacher is asking every question to their kid.) As this school is a business, this rule lasted about one hour. Instead of being refused to enter, the school found an old thermometer (which isn't accurate BTW) to scan everyone's hands before they enter.

As I expected, there is no sanitation going on.

The best part of this is the antibacterial soap. Laughable! It's a bottle of soap, or used to be. It is 95% water with a tiny bit of soap.

I asked why so many new rules were made. My manager said that two schools in this city had been closed due to N1H1. You'd think if schools had been closed (especially in a country that didn't even admit to having N1H1 until recently) that these precautions would be carried out.

I guess I know who will pay my hospital bills if I get N1H1.

Laziness and the Government

So, my last post was more than 8 months ago. Some of that is largely attributed to my laziness and/or work schedule. That last 4 or 5 months is due to a government ban on most blogs including this one.

Over the past 8 months a lot and only a little has happened.

I met Howie's family for the first time during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). We traveled to his hometown, a very small village near Fushun, Liaoning, China. During the stay I was exhausted almost the entire time and very homesick. His family was so welcoming and felt like my own family so much that I wanted my family to be with me as well. Howie's parents are farmers. Not corporate farmers like the US is filled with but commune type farmers. His aunts, uncles, and cousins all help his parents farm their land and his parents help his aunts, uncles, and cousins farm theirs. His father is also a pig butcher.

Spending time with his family was great. They have a traditional countryside home. This means, no running water. All their water is from a well. The bathroom is a hole in the ground in an outhouse. They have the cleanest, best made outhouse I have ever seen. His uncle (who has a modern apartment in a town nearby) let me go there to take showers a couple times. There are only so many "baths" I can take by wiping my skin with a wet rag. Dinners were huge and long. One of the dinners we had lasted about 5 hours. I was about dieing by the end of it. All meals are eaten in his parents' bedroom which also doubles as a living room. A small table is placed on the bed (made of concrete) and we sit around and eat with everyone sitting on the bed.

The Spring Festival holiday was a week long this time. The entire week was spent having large dinners, going to other people's homes, learning how to make dumplings, and eating every part of the pig that can be eaten.

Here are pictures from Spring Festival. And here are pictures of his home and the village.

Howie officially proposed to me in April. I came home from work under the impression that Howie was sick. When I walked in the door the living room was filled with roses hanging from the ceiling and candles everywhere. We had planned on having Pizza Hut that evening so he had ordered pizza so we didn't have to go out. He sang a song for me that he had written and had even made a little shirt for our cat to wear that said "Alicia, marry me." I knew it was coming but I was still very surprised. He planned everything and had been planning for a long time.

Here are the pictures from that.

One thing that is done here that is very different from the West is wedding pictures. Though we still aren't married, we already have our wedding pictures. We had these taken in May. It took two days and was extremely tiring.

Here are the untouched photos.

Howie and I got our marriage license on June 18th. We had to go to Shenyang for that since I am a foreigner. I first had to go to the US Consulate there and receive a letter that said I am not married and I am old enough to be married by US law. That took forever. The next day we had to go to the registration office. When we got there we learned that Howie's Household book was missing a stamp. We could not get married without that. We had to hastily go to Howie's hometown about 2 hours away and get that stupid little stamp. I was so frustrated that I was crying. Nothing was going right. On our third day in Shenyang we finally got our license after shelling out about 900 RMB (it cost about 50 RMB for native Chinese to get married). After that we headed back to Howie's family's house and relaxed for a day or two before heading back home.

Here are pictures from Howie's house in the summer.

Since then most of our time has been spent working and planning for the wedding. (Which is in about 2 weeks!) Luckily, Howie's father is taking care of most of the planning as is tradition here.

Howie is busy at work getting ready for a sales fair in Guangzhou and I'm busy with my new position as Senior Teacher at the same school.

I will try to get on and do updates more often from now on now that I have a proxy that allows me to access the site.

The Apartment

I finally took some pictures of the apartment.
They are here.

Now that the daytime highs are a little less that freezing I have had to break out the space heater to keep warm. Not much time is spent in the living room because it's so cold. The kitchen is even worse! I try to keep the curtain between the living room and kitchen closed to keep out some of the cold air. When Howie cooks he actually wears his coat it's so cold.

The bathroom is always the warmest room in the house. Which is nice when you have to pull down your pants or take a shower.

We very rarely have ice form on the inside of the windows but it has happened in the kitchen. I'm just glad that I broke down and have accepted the Chinese custom of wearing long underpants (sometimes up to 3 pairs) 24/7 during the winter. I haven't quite gotten used to the long underwear shirts yet. They are quite different from the ones in the States... At least I can feel my legs when I go outside now.