Jiajia and I enjoyed a fabulous  wedding celebration today. Ava coped admirably with the daunting task of meeting 100+  friends and family, and maintaining her smile. For me it was trying to place the multitude of guests from so many different spheres of my past life  - college, work, social, relatives, etc. It was so kind of so many folk to travel large distances to join with us on our special day. If you were one of them - thank you!

Despite minimal preparation (on our part, at least) the day went really smoothly and was full of memorable highlights - the venue (unorthodox perhaps, but with plenty of space to spread out), the bouncy castle (which kept young'uns and a few young-at-hearts happy), my brothers'  drama "speech" (all lies, I tell you), the costume changes (Jiajia got through three dresses during the day and looked stunning in all of them - thanks Jo and Krista!), the picnic (guests bringing their own food saves so much hassle and expense!) and the ceremony (mixing formal and informal, traditional and less traditional, Chinese and English, religious and secular - thanks Dad for juggling all that!). Thanks too to all the youngsters who helped with the dress-holding, confetti throwing and car-mangling!

The decorations were expertly arranged (thanks, sis-in-laws) - no mean feat in a building that size. And the cake that my parents sorted out was a fabulous creation, and tasty too. Dave and Andy did such a great job planning and running the day. I doubt many folk would have realised that the final schedule was only decided on the evening before, and the ceremony itself was rehearsed for five minutes just half an hour before the first guests arrived!

The day rushed by for us, but is full of happy memories, aided by the 1000 photos the guests kindly copied for us before they left. Despite having technically got married a couple of months earlier in China, this will be the day we look back on in future as our wedding day.

We travelled down to visit my brother Andy and his family today, in preparation for our Wedding Celebration in a few days. On arrival, they took us to Paulston Park, home of "Peppa Pig" (don't ask!). They go there often, as they have an annual pass for the family and were keen for Ava and I to experience some of the, frankly terrifying, rides. Ava was surprisingly up for it [see top right photo, with Ali and Andy to the right], while I took more persuading [I'm cowering behind Andy in the top left photo]. It was a fun, relaxed way for Ava to get to know my brother's family, and for me to reacquaint myself with Andy and Ali's kids, Louie and Daisy, who have grown up such a lot, even in the 1½ years since I last saw them.

We visited my Granddad today, two months short of his 100th birthday. It was so nice for Jiajia to meet him, since  her own Gran had died just before I was due to be introduced to her. It was pointed out today that although I was the eldest of Granddad's twelve grandchildren, I'm one of the last to be married. So Ava was proof that I had finally made it! 

Ava and I are in the UK now, having arrived safe but tired yesterday evening. We're both a bit jet-lagged and my gout is worse than before, so we're taking it easy for as few days. Ava is really enjoying the flowers and vegetables in my parents garden, keen to help dig up potatoes and water the roses! I've been enjoying my Mum's cooking and starting to sort out more of my stored boxes in the attic. We have a fairly busy schedule ahead as we approach our wedding celebration on Saturday.

I've been living with my wife and her mum for a month now. We're all slowly getting used to each other though it obviously requires a lot of patience and understanding for all concerned. I sometimes do things which Chinese culture deems pretty disgusting (such as drying washed dishes with a tea towel, not rinsing my underwear after removing it from the washing machine or putting tissues back into my pocket for a second nose-blow later!). And I, in turn, find some household routines a bit bizarre (such as "saving water" by not washing with the solar-heated tap water, but boiling up a kettle on the gas stove instead!?). Some things I quite like though. The weekly cleaners who spend a couple of hours washing the floors and dusting. The tree-shaded courtyard outside the house where the local community walk with their kids, play badminton and smile at me as I run around the oval 30+ times! And not many houses in the UK have an altar inside, either. Ava keeps this one [see photo] as a memorial to her much-loved Gran who died a couple of years ago. It all takes a bit of getting used to and I think 3 weeks in the UK will help me get it all in perspective. We fly in just a couple of days.

I just feel sorry for the chicken and his sore dollops!?

I had a fairly light teaching load this week, so I was able to move into Ava's house, unpack everything and sort out (i.e. "throw away") some of the copious amounts of "stuff" she has accumulated over the years. (I found 68 unused or barely used notebooks, for example!) A large house, used by just her and her Mum, has meant there has been little need to find extra space in the past. But my arrival has necessitated some reorganisation. The cuddly toys from around the house have been relocated to the top of the wardrobe, for example [see photo above]. I've also tried to spruce the place up a little. I'm not a natural at DIY, but I can get a bit arty when the mood takes me. Check out the lounge cupboards [see photo below]. Ava returns from Shenzhen late tonight, so we'll see what she thinks of the changes.

After last Halloween, I rescued two large zombie cardboard cutouts, attached them to the doors of our school staffroom and labelled them "Robert" and "Rachel" (my bosses). Oh, how we laughed! But today I found they've been replaced, and replaced by a large poster featuring myself as "Paul" (an alien of the same name which featured in a recent film). All fingers point to the graphics team, though I doubt they got it printed up without sanction from the leadership. Revenge is theirs!

Robert's School has 5 branches now and I've been keen to visit the one in the north of the city for some time. Vicky, who runs it [left in photo], came in especially today to help me find it once I got close, by bus. It has a bright and airy feel to it, but small in comparison to my own branch - they have 7 teachers and 600 students, we have 50 teachers and 3500 students. It's nice to have a mental picture of the place now, though. The branch there is part of a larger office complex which is used by other organisations teaching painting, board games, belly dancing, piano, etc. The Kunming English-speaking Christian Fellowship meet there too and I asked Vicky if she had had any contact with them. Yes, she said, they accused us of stealing their chairs and threatened to call the police! Christians, eh?

On the bus journey home, I had a typically surreal "China moment". I was standing, listening to my MP3 when I realised an old wrinkly man with a white wispy beard was shouting at me, quite angrily. I took off my headphones to find out what I'd done. In heavily accented English, he was bawling, "The Communist Party are corrupt. The Chinese Government have no right to lead us. They do not represent the people!" The other passengers were all staring at him, and at my reaction but thankfully nobody else seemed to speak English! I murmered "Err.. maybe, yes" as I swiftly left the bus. I wish I'd been able to speak to him more, but there's a time and a place, and a public bus ain't it!