the throes of marriage

Wow, I lost three weeks somewhere.

Somewhere in those three weeks, I attended a Taiwanese wedding. A foreigner was marrying a local, both known to the girl, so she invited me to come along. The service was bilingual and bizarre, which contributed to each others' cause. The priest had a section where he told five stories that were 'about marriage', according to him. However, he left the punchline as a lesson to be taught in the next part. Unfortunately, he had to tell all the stories, then tell the interpretation in Chinese, then give the interp in English. By this time, my attention had rival wandering experience comparable to the four-year-old wandering around the church. One example:

A man came home from drinking with his brother. His wife asked, "Why do you come home so late? Don't you love me?" He said, "Wife, how long have you been my wife?" "Seven years," she said. "And how long has my brother been my brother?" "Thirty years," she said. "I think you know which one I love more..."

And that's where it ended.

Also, the bride's father received about five phone calls on his cell phone, which he answered and engaged in during the ceremony.

And then the dinner! Traditional Taiwanese 12-course meal (all fish except the chicken soup (including whole chicken), as it is the same word as chicken in Taiwanese as family), accompanied by dancing girls! Yes, while we ate the first few courses, we were entertained by mostly-naked women prancing around on a stage to different songs in a variety of costumes. This was obviously ordered by the woman, because who doesn't want a group of naked women whose job it is to look better than you in order to make men like your new husband want them?

As a friend said after hearing this the next night, "You know, I try to defend them, try to step up to the plate to argue for them, but they don't even give you a bat..."

Bizarre.

Don't get me wrong, I love 'em. They're fun times. Especially for the free beer and whiskey at the last one. For a full-on look at the food at a Taiwanese wedding, check out the album on the left. My favourite part? The invitation for that one.

Location: On the road in front of my house

Sounds more like an invitation of where to pass out after the party. But weddings are often held in blocked-off side streets. Cheap, for sure. Oh, and they get paid for - everyone gives hong bao - red envelopes with cash in it. You pay for the dinner and more. It's a great boon for the newly wedded couple. Who wouldn't love a mittful of cash?

on logical jumps of late

Lead-in: We had been discussing vowels sounds as a review, then the schwa sound (a.k.a. the dead vowel). One of the words I used as an example was banana. Then we went back to the vowel sounds, and foil came up. I asked if anyone knew what foil was.

Student: It is...you have and you want to eat...
Me: You want to eat the foil?
S (glaring): I didn't finish. You have one thing you did not eat and you want to eat it later, so you have the foil and you put it...uh uh uh...banana.

Uh uh uh is usually where kids will say the Chinese, but they can't say Chinese, so they kind of use it to show how many Chinese characters are in the word they want to say. Still, there's quite a logical jump from foil to banana.

But it's not only Chinese kids. Within the space of two minutes the other day, traveling on the highway to do my last dives before certification (I'm now a certified diver! Well, certifiable at the least), a certain friend was known to utter in three consecutive sentences, looking out the window:

"Let's go on a mango raid!"
"I wonder if they let dogs in the mango orchards..."
"Can you kung fu a dog?"

I mean, you can see the progression there, but still...

Confusion. It's multilingual.

you can't be a kid forever. (sigh)

When queried as to why he was just picking at his food (bought and brought in, rather than the usual food his mother came in to make for the group), one boy at the Saturday program a couple of weeks ago simply replied:

"My mom no make. I don't like."

Welcome to the world the rest of us live in, kiddo.

*****

My little ABC class that I started last week is wonderful. I have a little girl who had gone to an English kindergarten who is four and has a huge vocabulary. When we went to leave the first day, I walked her down to the front door to wait for her mother. When I went to go back up to the teacher's room, she turned and asked, "Teacher, you wait for your mommy?" No, sorry, sweetheart. I'll be waiting a little bit longer than you on that one.