(Looking freshy!)
We ended up waiting about an hour for her to get ready because, as it turns out, it takes longer for women to get ready (generally speaking of course) here too. And, no wonder, look at how much make-up my host aunts have got on:
We traveled by car to the wedding. It was the first time I'd been in a car besides one of those jam-packed vans in some time. Not surprisingly, there were still no seatbelts and we had three in the front and five in the back of a five seat car.
As we pulled up to the wedding I heard the blasting speakers and saw the elaborate tents and knew I was in the right place. I went to greet the school director whose daughter was getting married and he took me by the hand, away from my host-family, to a table of people I'd never met. If I hadn't been living in Cambodia for about half a year already, this would have surprised me. I made small talk with a few of my neighbors and waved to some of the teachers I knew at tables nearby. I did my best to take everything in and emulate what others were doing, but after about five minutes of this I pulled out my camera. Classic barong move.
(I don't know any of these people...)
The food was pretty spectacular. We had over-sized grilled fish, some sort of a salad, some sort of a soup (I really need to start learning the names of the food), and cashews. All of the guests were seated under giant multicolored tents, which is pretty common from what I've noticed of weddings here so far. Where there's a tent there's a wedding, or possibly a funeral...
(Live music and multicolored tents!)
I sat and ate. The band played on. I paid my dues (at weddings here guests are expected to contribute money to help cover the cost of the wedding. All contributions are recorded in a registry with names next to the amount of money that each person gave). What happened next was pretty unexpected. The director asked me to sing a song. I was really hoping he was joking, nope. Over the next half hour I went and talked to the guy at the keyboards and tried to figure out a song I could sing. He only knew Khmer songs, but there was one song that had been translated into Khmer in which the chords were the same, well mostly. I only partially knew the words because it was a song my students requested and I'd had them work with during one of my clubs, but I did have it on my phone. I played the song to myself as far away as I could get from the giant speakers and wrote the starts of some of the lines so I could remember. Then I got on stage and sang in front of about 400 plus people. It still doesn't seem real. It turns out the Khmer version of the song had a few differences from the English version, but I stuck it out and pulled off a semi-decent version of "Take Me to Your Heart." The song can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdCpASsqPuk After singing, it was time for the traditional circle-walk ceremony with sparklers followed by cake cutting (a borrowed tradition, as I'm told), and then the attack of the glitter and silly string. I've got a video of this, but it's way to big to upload with this connection.
(The circle-walk ceremony with the wedding party.)
After the ceremonies finished, I was asked to dance, mostly by men, and spent a few hours on the dance floor either pretending I could dance Khmer-style, copying who I thought looked the silliest, or doing some free spirited form of dancing, which anyone who's really seen me dance before would recognize.
(You've gotta love the pentatonic scale!)
Back to Scrubs voice...
"In the end, it doesn't really matter if you dance or sing or have a few too many due to the fact that all of your co-teachers, family members, the village chief, and random strangers want to toast with you. What matters is that you are there, that you show up, and appreciate those around you. So, as we say in Cambodia, lee-uh-sun-howie."
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