My First Karen Wedding

The lovely couple and my students to the left and right.

You may be wondering what 'Karen' means.  It is a tribe of people that live in the country of Burma.  They were forced to leave their villages there and became refugees in Thailand.  I teach lots of wonderful Karen students and was honoured to be invited to the wedding of my students' older brother.  I have to admit that I have a soft spot for these kids in particular because we both started at my high school at the same time back in 2007.  I have taken two maternity leaves since then but they are always sure to say hi and ask me how my children are doing.  I still teach many of them in both my tutorial classes and my regular EAL classes.  It was particularly fun to take Connor and Aleena today as my students were very excited to see them.

The wedding was very nice although I didn't understand very much aside from the official vows.  It kind of reminded me of when I first arrived in Taiwan and had no clue what was going on.  It made me realize once again how hard it is to live in a foreign country when you don't speak the language.  The most striking part of the ceremony for me was the amazing singing.  Not only were there some lovely duets but the entire congregation sounded like a choir singing in unison.  Aleena joined right in with them which was quite cute.

After the singing, sermon, and musical interludes, there was a great dinner provided in the basement of the church.  They basically order Chinese takeout..and there was a lot of it!  As in, it looked like they ordered everything off the menu at a particular restaurant.  There was also another table with tons of fruit.  Connor, my little fruit monster, loved that aspect of the lunch.  The whole affair took around 2 1/2 hours and we thought it was great that it all happens back to back.  First, the ceremony is held and the lunch was immediately afterward in the basement of the church.

I really enjoyed the wedding and hope that I'm lucky enough to attend many more in the years to come.

These are all my students too!  They are very talented singers.