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.