Chinese wedding

Last weekend I went to my first wedding in Hong Kong. My colleague, Maggie, got married to her college sweetheart. Because Maggie is a Christian and is quite Westernized (she met her husband at the University of Toronto), the ceremony wasn't too different than most weddings that I've been to. It was a beautiful day, and the wedding was held at a YMCA camp chapel. It was my first bilingual wedding (Cantonese and English), and at the end of the ceremony, there was a photo session with the congregation.

However, the wedding banquet was quite traditionally Chinese. Above is a picture of Maggie in one out of five dresses that she wore that day. It seemed to me that her main role was to keep changing dresses and then posing with people in a queue. After some time of mingling, the 12 course dinner started. The meal didn't start until after 9, and didn't finish until 11:30pm. The courses were traditional Chinese food, and each course held special symbolism, mostly for luck and good fortune, such as Shark Fin Soup. The banquet was quite formal, but in between courses, friends toasted and roasted Maggie and John and with games and a slideshow.

Here's a shot of the banquet hall, held in a restaurant in a fairly posh hotel. Maggie was engaged for about 2 years, mostly because she was holding out for a spot at this restaurant.

Relatives played Mahjong before the meal. I also missed the tea ceremony, where Maggie and John served tea to relatives and in exchange, recieved Lai See packets

(red and gold envelopes containing money).
Our first course was roast pig, which was brought out in a parade by every server. This was my favorite part of the evening. The pig's eye sockets held blinking lights, fastened by toothpicks. I was one of the only Westerners at the banquet, so people kept checking my reaction to things like this. I couldn't help but laughing at thie one!
Here's our server dishing out our first course. Everything was served for us in small portions, but 12 courses filled me up quickly, especially because most of it was meat dishes.
Here's the sign in sheet/book for the banquet.
Beautiful table settings. I'm glad I grew up knowing how to use chopsticks because people kept fussing over me to make sure I knew how to use them and that I could eat. It wasn't a problem.



Here are some co-workers at the wedding ceremony: Gostick, Anna, Christine, Kelly, Yan, myself, and Michelle
Here's a shot of the guests waiting for the ceremony to begin. In true Hong Kong fashion, it started about 20 minutes late.

Banana Race

This weekend I did a race called "Beat the Banana", which was, just as it sounds: a race to run after and beat a life-sized Banana. My friend Jason (on the right here) won the race last year, thus earing the title as the Banana man. Here we are pre-race and pre-Banana costume.
A magician shows us card tricks before the race.
Before the race, there was group exercises and warm-ups in true bizarre Hong Kong fashion. It's a little hard to see the Banana on-stage leading the crowd. Here's the group from my school...Jason, me, Kelly, some students, Jenn, Kathie, Lori, and Tom

My friend Jenn after completing the race along the harbor waterfront...we had to run through many tour groups and onlookers and through the "Avenue of the Stars".