just as I am

Just Married!

Michael and Margaret

So I realize that it has been a tremendously long time--months!--since I last posted. This has been a result of being very busy, among other things...

But I recently returned from a very enlightening, fun, and interesting trip to Louisiana. The primary purpose of the trip was to attend the wedding of my friend, Margaret, and her fiancé, Michael. I'll start at the beginning of my trip, if I can.
I drove to Yakima on Tuesday night and had a very nice trip in the car. Tim graciously let me take his car so that I would have a way to get back to Pullman after my trip. I drove straight to Belu Design, a cool hair design studio in Yakima, where I got my hair cut (Pictures to come...). When the Jodi finished cutting my hair and 'styling' it, it looked as though I had "stuck my finger in a socket", as Annie said...and it was very true. I was unperturbed, though, realizing that most people have no idea how to style curly hair and make it look good, especially after they have been combing and cutting it and messing up all the natural curls. Alas, but when I got home I made it wet again and it looked much better. After that Dad, Annie, Sarah and I went out to Mongolian grill for dinner and had a really fun time. The cooks were actually of Vietnamese heritage (which Dad guessed), so I tried my Vietnamese 'thank you' on them and they were like, where'd you learn that? I learned it from Cat and it sounds something like "gam ung" to the American ear.

Anyway, I took the shuttle to Seattle early on Wednesday morning and took my flight in Seattle to Houston. On the flight I sat next to a lady whose son was going to be married in Cancoon. Interesting. And I read the book A wrinkel in time by Madeleine L'Engle. It was a very strange book, but an fun and interesting read.

From Houston I flew to Lake Charles, Louisiana, which is where Margaret and her family are from. The plane was small and I got to sit in the first seat, which was a single. That was kind of fun.

Then I walked off the plane (and even when I was standing, waiting to exit the plane, I felt like a sauna was coming to swallow me up and engulf me in the hot stickiness. It was so humid. Margaret told me that it was especially bad because it had rained earlier in the day, the first rain in a few weeks, and that they were haveing a particularly hot spell. I had never experienced anything of the sort in my entire life!!!! I mean, we have heat in Yakima, but the humidity is sapping.

Margaret's little brother, Jack, came with her to pick me up, which was nice.

Back at Margaret's house I met her parents and some relatives (Aunt Mary, and Mary-Michael....) had some seafood gumbo and a piece of very delicious chocolate cake.

The neighbors, the Kings, allowed Janet, another one of Margaret's friends, and me to stay in their garage apartment/guest house.

But before I tell you about that, let me tell you about Margaret's family's house. It was huge and beautiful. It's in old house, built c. 1914 with 12 foot ceilings. Suffice it to say that the entry way was bigger than our living room....(pictures to follow).

The guest house where I was staying was also lovely...

The guest apartment where Janet and I stayed...

View from the guest apartment. That's Margaret's family's house beyond the white fence...

Something else interesting: they all rely on air conditioning. Seriously, they are dependent on it. Even the people that live down there don't like the heat and humidity. It was in the upper-nineties and around 100 pretty much the whole time I was down there...it got down into the upper eighties at night, but the humidity remained high.

Thursday I sucked back more water than I pretty much ever drink, and still was probably dehydrated (I'll just tell you that I only peed 1 time during the whole day until I got back after the party.) Which brings me to the Crawfish Boil.

This is a crawfish.

The crawfish being boiled (there were also some shrimp).

A Crawfish Boil is where a bunch of friends get together for a party. They bring in pounds and pounds (they usually guess around 3-5 pounds per person) of live crawfish, and boil them in a cajun seasoning. Then when they're done they put them out for people to eat (with their fingers)....

Margaret's grandma and aunt. They also boil corn and potatoes and mushrooms in the cajun flavouring...pretty spicy and pretty tasty!

You would not believe how these people go at it. They eat, and eat, and eat crawfish and have a good time. Different people have different techniques for opening the crawfish. Oh yeah, and you only eat the tail (you can 'suck the head' if you want, which means that you suck out the flavouring or get the eggs? out of the head-part of the crawfish, but not everybody does this.)

Crawfish. This tray is over a barrel/garbage can and the whole in the center is for throwing the parts of the crawfish that you don't eat...

Dominique (friend) and Anne (sister of Margaret) demonstrating to me how to do it...

Lots of food, lots of socializing, lots of crawfish and messy fingers....but it was fun and definitely a cultural experience!

Margaret and Jack, her youngest brother

Me with Dominique at the crawfish boil

On Friday morning we went to the bridesmaid's luncheon, put on by Margaret's aunts. It was beautiful, and I had a lot of fun. Something good about having so many events before the wedding, is that the guests/extended families get to know each other.....

Jane and me at the luncheon

On Friday we went to the rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner. The wedding took place in a beautiful catholic church, and the rehearsal and dinner were formal (people dress up for things a lot more in the south...) The restaurant was at the top of a building, and the view of lake charles was very nice...

The cathedral where Margaret got married...

Janet and me at the rehearsal

Margaret's mom and brothers at the rehearsal

The location for the rehearsal dinner...

The view of Lake Charles from the top of this building where we had dinner

Margaret and me at the rehearsal dinner

Janet and me at rehearsal din din

Bruce (Best man) and Noelle, his girlfriend.

Saturday morning I went with Janet to the wedding...it was lovely, and the priest gave a really good talk about marriage, it wasn't a full mass and the whole thing lasted about 30 minutes....the reception was at the country club and was very elegant. I think the chocolate caramel peacan wedding cake was the best one that I've ever had!

Outside view of the cathedral

Janet and me before the wedding

Margaret entering the church with her father...

I got to spend a lot of time talking with Noelle, the Bruce (the best man's) girlfriend. She was quite a bit of fun!

The reception was very elegant

Margaret and Michael at the reception

After the reception Janet and I went back to our nice little apartment accomodations at the neighbour's house and rested etc. On Sunday I went to church with the neighbour family. It was an episcopal church, which was different. Then they took me to ihop with them for lunch, I packed up in the afternoon and then Margaret took me to the airport... It was a wonderful trip and a great experience!

Me, Margaret and Michael

Here are some Christmas pictures! Some of them are blurry, but whatever...

Early Christmas morning...

The heap of presents.

The kids all get up earlier and have a party in the basement together where we go through our amazing stockings and admire each other's new things (and mom's amazingness at doing stockings!)

Here we are opening gifts. We started sometime maybe 10:30 or 11-ish and opened presents until about 3pm (we had a couple breaks for lunch etc).

We open gifts one at a time and admire each one and the giver of the gift. This year we did partner/groups for the gifts which turned out to be really nice. Trudy was my partner...

NEW YEARS

Then on New Years the kids went out to play in the snow and to build snow forts...

We all joined the kids and build our forts and had different teams and then had a snow battle...it was a lot of fun. Then we built a family of snowmen in the back yard.

I don't have any pictures of the New Year's party, but there were a lot of people here and there was a Black Horse Band reunion (though Ray, Jane, Tyler and Snook couldn't make it!)...

Martina, our wonderful exchange student, is leaving tomorrow morning! We are very sad!