hotel california is a wedding song now?

busy day today. 2 classes in the morning and then right when i got home, tess and i left for wu fen pu road in taipei which is famous for being the place where the night market vendors buy their clothes from. it's interesting because they have samples hung up all along the walls and then in the middle it's just rows and rows of clothes wrapped in plastic. so you bring them the sample and they go get you one in the plastic wrap.
i bought a shirt for $3 and a dress for $10. love taiwan.

dena goes to this bakery called love cake and she always brings back delicious garlic bread, so today i set off to find it. turns out they have two locations. i brought home ham and cheese bread..
and deliiiicious garlic bread.
dan and i went to justin's wedding reception tonight. justin was a chef at latini's for a long long time. he is so sweet and fun and friendly, i was so happy to be invited. the reception was really interesting.

highlights..
before you walk in the door to the ballroom, they took your red envelope, opened it, counted and recorded how much money you gave the couple in this giant weddingy ledger. there are no wedding gifts, everyone just gives cash.
they put as at the table with justin's friends from canada, where he went to school for 10 years. they were all taiwanese but spoke english fluently. i sat beside a really nice couple who live in taipei. the girl was a merchandise buyer for a clothing company in taipei for a long time. she helped me figure out how to eat the food and explained the ins and outs of the reception.
when i sat down, one of the servers came over with a knife and fork and asked if i needed them. i said no thank you, chop sticks will be fine. then i flung the million-course dinner all over myself and others and dropped at least half of what i tried to pick up. i was so embarrassed because i've really mastered wooden chopsticks, but those slippery plastic ones are a whole different thing.

we had..
a tray of various meats
the most ridiculously difficult prawns ever. two people had to help me with those.
shrimp noodle soup
pork ribs
an unidentifiable animal-innard dish
sticky rice
a whole fish, who spent most of the evening staring at me
black chicken soup, which i now love. look how far i've come.
almond milk soup, totally yummy.
some kind of sweet potato pastry things
fresh fruit
the best part of the entire night was the light saber interlude. the lights went off, blacklights came on, and the female servers processed in with tealights in white gloved hands and stopped intermittently in the aisle. then, two male servers came in with blue light sabers and walked around the tables a few times.
meanwhile, a whole orchestral overture is booming in surround sound. thennn, two more guys with red light sabers came in and walked around. then they all left and the lights came back on and we went back to eating dinner. no explanation given.
coolest taiwan wedding factoid:
the couple takes these elaborate wedding pictures and the bride gets to wear all sorts of pretty outfits in them. none of them are her actual wedding dress, they're just costumes. but what i learned tonight was that the 4 dresses she wore tonight were also borrowed from the photographer. they cut them down to fit her and then when she's done with them, they rip the seams and make them fit the next girl.

at first i thought it was kind of sad not to have your own wedding dress.. but after seeing her in a beautiful sparkely white dress, then a beautiful silver sequined dress, then a pretty purple organza dress, i think i'm on board with the bazillion dresses thing. no one ever wears their wedding dress again. why not wear 10 for the price of 1?
time for bed.