The Wedding - part 2 of 4

The wedding

The wedding itself and a visit to Spring School.  I arrived in Tongren about an hour early and told Jamie that I was there, he said he'd met me in the foyer of the hotel in an hour or so, and I went off for a walk.  Three piece suit and a rucksack! ( This photo is outside the hotel taken with the selfie camera so its a mirror shot, and I cant be bothered to change it!)
I got the usual stares and nudges, but not as many.  I reckon they were more used to foreigners here.  I walked maybe  a few hundred metres and sat down on a bench under a tree.  This was not the best of ideas as the mosquitoes lived there and I am a mosquito magnet!  So I moved on, walked around a little and noticed someone staring more than usual.  It was Susie.  More about her in the next post.  After an interesting chat with Susie, I eventually met Jamie, his wife Eileen and Mehdi in reception.  Mehdi is a Moroccan guy who has been here for several years.  He speaks good Chinese and very good English.  We went to the gift table and they dropped off their gifts.  Then into the lift and up to the reception.  I was not ready for this!  I had seen big weddings before, but this was maybe a thousand people! 



 We were ushered to our tables and food began to arrive, cigarettes smoked and Baijiu (literal translation - white spirit - a white alcoholic drink) was drunk.  Just for the interested, I don't smoke or drink...people are a little surprised, less so than in England, but just accept it.  Then we started to eat.  The food was fantastic, especially after the food in Jiagkou. (Sorry if you are reading this and you are from Jiangkou!).


The food just kept coming, so much, so rich and so tasty.  I ate too much!  Then as we had eaten our fill, Jamie got up and took us away!  We were not staying for the ceremony.  So off we trotted.  He asked me if I wanted to check in to my hotel, loks like I was staying the night, and I told him to do what suited him.  With his usual" OK la".  He said that we are going to see a school.  We crossed the roads and headed down a tiny side street, up some stairs and I was introduced to Spring, the owner of Spring School.


Then after the usual greetings and smoking of cigarettes, we moved to my hotel. 



 Jamie's friend owned the hotel, Jamie has a lot of friends!  The hotel was lovely!  All marble and gold, with an interesting feature in the bedroom.  The wall that separated the bathroom from the bedroom was glass.  There were blinds on the glass 'window'.  These could be controlled from inside the bathroom, so if you wanted to been watched whilst showering or whilst on the loo, it was possible.  Not sure why, but at least you had the choice!

Bathroom 'wall window' closed

Bathroom 'wall window'open  

The control knob.  It's always good to have a control knob to control viewing access to your bathroom!


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