{"id":14,"date":"2008-11-03T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/?p=14"},"modified":"2008-11-03T12:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T12:28:00","slug":"a-wedding-like-no-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/2008\/11\/a-wedding-like-no-other\/","title":{"rendered":"A wedding like no other"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On April Fools&#8217; Day 2007, I wrote <a href=\"http:\/\/fieldandgarden.discurs.us\/2007\/04\/decisions.html\">a post<\/a> about suddenly falling in love and getting hitched with a woman I met in a bar. I thought it was a pretty preposterous story considering I was the protagonist, but ultimately the joke was on me. Sometime in the prior month I had in fact met a woman at a bar, we did suddenly fall in love, and we are now married.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD178j4CDI\/AAAAAAAAAKw\/x-cL7g22rQY\/s1600-h\/IMG_3340.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 160px;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD178j4CDI\/AAAAAAAAAKw\/x-cL7g22rQY\/s320\/IMG_3340.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273985573868537906\" \/><\/a><br \/>Our first impressions of each other were admittedly not great. I was cultivating my nerdy, girl-repellent look at that time, and when we were first introduced, her first words were &#8220;Do you wanna teach some English classes?&#8221;, a line every native English speaker in China grows tired of hearing. But we ended up spending a couple days of our May holiday together, and I quickly realized I rather liked her. Besides her frankness and ease with strangers, she was pretty cute, clearly intelligent, culturally experienced, and unlike any woman I&#8217;ve known. It turned out all my friends already knew her, and everyone who knew her liked her. It took a little bit longer for her to figure out that I was a likeable guy, but before long we were spending all our free time together. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD18BwyrVI\/AAAAAAAAAK4\/NWqXLP6IkeA\/s1600-h\/IMG_3512.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 160px;\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD18BwyrVI\/AAAAAAAAAK4\/NWqXLP6IkeA\/s320\/IMG_3512.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273985575264890194\" \/><\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD18Zay40I\/AAAAAAAAALA\/ZZKIlYBsSHw\/s1600-h\/IMG_3548.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 160px;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD18Zay40I\/AAAAAAAAALA\/ZZKIlYBsSHw\/s320\/IMG_3548.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273985581615080258\" \/><\/a><br \/>I delayed my planned return to the States as long as possible, but trying hard to not follow in the footsteps of my Fool&#8217;s Day alter ego who quit school, and not quite able to believe she really liked me that much, I went back to school in California, with a visit scheduled for my winter break. It turned out she actually was as stuck on me as I was on her, and by the time winter break came, we were making marriage plans.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD19GVY4PI\/AAAAAAAAALQ\/KTEnqSKHlCk\/s1600-h\/IMG_3460.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 160px;\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD19GVY4PI\/AAAAAAAAALQ\/KTEnqSKHlCk\/s320\/IMG_3460.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273985593671999730\" \/><\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD186_sybI\/AAAAAAAAALI\/wEZphr-wELs\/s1600-h\/IMG_3485.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 160px;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STD186_sybI\/AAAAAAAAALI\/wEZphr-wELs\/s320\/IMG_3485.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273985590628239794\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Marriage plans are a little complicated when the partners have lives on separate continents. It&#8217;s taking a while, and still isn&#8217;t done. It won&#8217;t be official until after her visa process finishes, which looks now like it will be a few months more. But last month my parents came to visit, and we celebrated with her friends and family here, in a wedding sui generis, including scenic mountain views, fireworks, dancing, a bonfire, and lots of super people all having fun together.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STFpDFh8S-I\/AAAAAAAAALY\/AfY82LQhwy0\/s1600-h\/IMG_3326.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_BXkiQM4bSws\/STFpDFh8S-I\/AAAAAAAAALY\/AfY82LQhwy0\/s320\/IMG_3326.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274112140372626402\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On April Fools&#8217; Day 2007, I wrote a post about suddenly falling in love and getting hitched with a woman I met in a bar. I thought it was a pretty preposterous story considering I was the protagonist, but ultimately the joke was on me. Sometime in the prior month I had in fact met &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/2008\/11\/a-wedding-like-no-other\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A wedding like no other<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4,7,6,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-family","category-life","category-love","category-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldandgarden.whiled.life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}