Sunday October 15, 2000

Today is the wedding day of my cousin Jien-Huey and his bride.  We all made ourselves pretty for the occasion, I was especially excited to see my relatives after 10 years.  My cousin Ya-chin picked us up in her new Toyoto Tercel.  The last time I saw her was ten years ago when we were both naive and innocent teenagers with boys on our minds.  She has turned out to be a very attractive and mature young woman, and an independent and successful businesswoman.  We had no trouble finding things to talk about, but it was very different from what it was 10 years ago.  The trip to the banquet was about 2 hours so we had plenty of time to get aquinted again.  Poor Russ was feeling left out not understanding what we're saying.

Cousin Jien-Huey and his bride had already gone through the wedding ceremony that morning.  Jien Huey had to go down to Tainan, the bride's hometown, and "take" her from her family.  It was a traditional ceremony with fire crackers and the whole nine-yard.  I wish I had been there!  We were at the banquet for about half an hour before he and the bride and the families arrived.  We went through some ceremonial proceedings with the newly weds lighting candles and the ceremony hostess poking fun at them (that's a Taiwanese wedding tradition, see the movie "Wedding Banquet").  Finally the food started coming in.  YUMMY!  I was kept busy talking to my relatives and felt bad that Russ was on his own.  Normally I wouldn't worry, but since no one was speaking English he was having a hard time mingling.  Baba and Ya-Chin's father were goofing around after a few drinks.  After having finished the bottle of Brandy on their table, they started going around drinking Brandy on the other tables.  It was fun watching them having a good time - just being men I guess.  At one time I had just returned from the Ladies' Room and found my father challenging one of Jien-Huey's college friends to date me.  Argh!

After the banquet, Cousin Ya-Chin, her parents and us (my parents, me and Russ) drove to a beach-side house that Ya-Chin's parents had just bought.  There we walked about the house, chatted and just hung-out for a little while.  By the time we started back North it was late afternoon.  We had to deal with heavy traffic and were exhausted by the time we got home.  It was a fun day; a good way to end the trip in Taiwan.