The Wedding and other unrelated tales of woe

Before I write about the wedding, I just want to say a few random things that have just come to mind:
Firstly, I love it how in Israel, the price of umbrellas go up when it rains! That's soooo Israel for you!
And also, I am currently loving listening to Scissor Sisters- (Kudos to Jord who burnt it for me on MP3, and thanks to Kim for reccommending them to me in the first place) They rock!
I also forget to mention earlier a funny thing. In Eli's grandma's house, she has a big framed photo hanging in her living room taken from when she was in London many years ago with her late husband, and it's of them looking very serious, standing in front of Dame Edna. So I asked her what was that all about, and she told me it was at Madame Toussads wax hall, and they wanted a picture next to the queen, and they thought that was her! How funny is that! First, I had to break it to her softly that that wasn't in fact a statue of the queen, then I had to gently tell her that she wasn't even English, but Australian, then I had to delicately tell her it wasn't even a woman, but a cross-dressing man! Of all the intense shock she was experiencing at my revelations, she seemed most depressed about the fact that s/he wasn't really English. She really wanted to have a photo to remember England by. She is sooo cute. Unfortunately, I succeeded in unintentionally making her feel a bit down about that for a while after, because she felt she had been tricked and now that picture's been on her wall for decades and all for nothing. Eli, Maor and Ety however, found it hilarious, as did I... and we tried to convince her that it was still okay to have a picture of a waxed Australian cross dressing queen...

Today in one of my classes, I facilitated a discussion about first impressions and intuition. We used lots of descriptive adjectives and adverbs- both visual and characteristic types, and I got each student to chat to the person on their left for about 5 minutes about 'love at first sight' and other such interesting things as well as to share personal experiences & stories about accurate or inaccurate first impressions..
Then, after the 5 minutes, I handed out question slips and got every student to write about their first impressions of the person they had just been speaking to... such things as age/background/hobbies/interests/weaknesses/strengths/marital status/ etc/favourite food/music etc.....
It was an excellent class and the students were stimulated and we used lots of juicy vocab and I encouraged everyone to be honest, and everything was going great, until one man guessed that the woman he had been speaking to on his left was about 40 years old. And she was in fact closer to 30.
Ouch.
Then there was another guy who guessed that his partner's weakness was that: quote "she don't know how to say no". Ummmmmmm... things got a bit tense when this woman got offended and asked him to explain, and his explanation was "like, in lifestyle choices"...huh?? So she asked him how he got this impression from her and he told her he got it from her clothes. WHOAH. People were reading into people a little too deeply...
Then I got the class to all write about their first impressions of me. It was a class I had never taught before so none of them knew me. I got such fascinating feedback, I'm tempted to run this class again every week! I'd say the most interesting was that I was 32, Scandinavian, married+1, and that I love coffee. Haha!!! I am SUCH an open book, damn.
Teaching, as always, is lots of fun and it sure is keeping me on my toes :-)

Anyway, on to the wedding:
So, I'm not sure if kitsch fully sums it up, but it's the closest I think I'm going to get. It was extravagant to the extreme and totally over the top. But it was wonderful! Look at what the bride was wearing! She looked great, but c'mOn!! A thick white fur shawl under the chuppa? Disco balls and pyrotechnics and fake pearls and white roses and chandeliers and palm trees and glitter....and the list goes on... I thought the henna party was a cultural shock, but this was equally as crazy. I also thought the Ethhiopian/Morroccan wedding I went to in Jerusalem almost 3 months ago took the cake, but this took not only the cake, but the crumbs and plate and knife with it! It was such a massive production I don't even know where to begin.

First of all, there was a big grand entrance for everyone who walked in. The family were lined up waiting inside to kiss and shake hands and be congratulated, so everyone walks through a sea of people, feeling like the queen being greeted, which is a little bizarre. Then we head straight to the food! Then we head to our table, to put aforementioned food and bags and coats down. Then we go mingle (before aforesaid food is actually eaten; the whole point of this is so to make sure one doesn't miss out on the good stuff which will go quickly! True! Every time a dish would finish, something else would come out to replace it. There was just an ever- changing menu!) So then I got introduced to like 400 guests, 75% of whom all managed to be an uncle, aunt or cousin of Eli's somehow... we had to endure what every unmarried boyfriend/girlfriend couple at Morroccan weddings must go through, the torturous "Bekarov etzlechem" wishes, which means "soon hopefully for you"..
ay ay ay.

Pumping music played as the couple made their way hand-in-hand down the (red carpeted) aisle, and into the middle of the dance floor where the chuppa was staged, under a big disco ball and lots of pearls and white silk... Only close family stand under the chuppa, and as a result it was ridiculously overcrowded. The glass was broken, everyone cheered a hearty mazal tov and the party kicked off to a wild start with pyrotechnics and the Dance of Love (a dance actually announced by the DJ in thick accented English for some obscure reason, where the couple dance together for the first time as husband and wife, under a spotlight and encircled by firework/sparkler display things flying up from the ground somehow.) There was constant confetti and balloons falling down from somewhere mysterious, and even though I distinctly remember seeing the floor super vacuumed several times with a big machine, the floor managed to redirty itself with more confetti and gold and sparkles and shiny things from god knows where, all throughout the night, and which kept getting stuck in the grooves of my high heels and making it uncomfortable to dance on...

Anyway, the fashion was totally out there. I don't want to say too much about that in case I may be related to these people one day and perhaps one day they'll learn how to read and understand English. See my photos (http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sarahknopman/my_photos)- I think that sums it up all pretty well there. The table dancing was also wild (That's Ortal, Roy's sister, and their mother Dina, making sure she doesn't fall off the table) -As was the concept of a trolley brought out to the middle of the dance floor full of shot glasses. Shots of vodka, tequilla, whiskey, all sorts of things.. and most of the time 2 girls (invariably the sister of the groom and a cousin) would be dancing on the edges of the trolley... Crazy! Unfortunately I never got a photo of that, but I really liked that shots idea. Everyone got verrrry drunk. (Maor-Eli's bro, dancing suggestively with Nitzan- brother of the groom, with parents Dina and Tzion behind.)
Also, they had a really neat set-up of having a separate bar just for shots, right next to the dancefloor, where maybe 20 shots would be lined up at any given time for people to just come and take.

The food (I know, I know, I held off for so long, but it's important to do it justice and mention it just once more) -was out of this world. It was impossible to try everything. They had a choice of about 4 different main dishes, and that was after various kinds of buffets had already been set out. Russian and Morroccan food I believe are the 2 greatest foods known to mankind. At least the 2 greatest foods known to Eli and I. We were very content, you could say. I am very excited for my brother's wedding (in 3 weeks!) to sample the Morroccan themed menu. I wonder if I should match the theme and dress in Morroccan wedding dress style. Hmmmm.. no that's an idea.

Basically, all in all, there was non-stop dancing all night. No speeches or formalities, just food and drinks and dancing.

Cest La Vie

I hope you've all enjoyed and appreciated my massive catch up effort of blog writing over the last few days. It is now 2:00am. Now I expect comments and emails from all of you. (You do realise I've set this up so I know exactly who's read this and who hasn't, so don't think you can get away with not writing to me...)

Love to all,
signing off now,
a very tired SARA SHARA SHIR SAMEACH
xxxx

PS- I might be writing for TIME OUT Tel Aviv magazine! More on that later...