We had our friends wedding today. James Bond and his wife-Liu Hui. They actually got married over Chinese New Year, but this was the more formal ceremony. He has been a good friend of ours for a couple of years now. He wanted our family to be a part of the ceremony, so Selah did the flower girl thing (the other girl in the picture is another friends daughter, Hannah) and Malachi the ring bearer role. Brad gave a short speech. Here's us pre-wedding.
Last night was the rehearsal and dinner. Normally there's not a rehearsal, but they wanted a more Western wedding, so rehearse we did. We went to the hotel and in the front lobby was a tank full of HUGE toads. The kids loved it. They sat and laughed and watched the unsuspecting frogs swim gleefully around their tank. After spending some time admiring the huge frogs, (enter gloomy-on-your-way-to-your-death music) there appeared two shadows from above the tank. What were these two shadows?! Nothing less than nets. And why nets you ask (or at least the frogs asked), well, because dinner needed to be served. So two of the frogs were whisked away. The kids were asked to follow them into the kitchen to watch, but mom intervened. I'll have no frog cooking nightmares on my watch.
We told James that we didn't want to know which dish the frogs were in, but I think it was diced and served with cabbage. And we had already told our friends the foreigner rice trick. The rice trick is that when you go to formal banquets you always save some rice in your bowl to hide the strange dishes that are served. Promptly stuffed to the bottom of the bowl and everyone saves face. So he was watching us. But we got everything down and the meal was actually wonderful. Both at this meal and the wedding meal we got to have octopus, duck, shrimp, and some great spicy dishes.
All was well and we had a great time with our friends and their families.
