The wedding, located at the village’s community center, was truly beautiful and had hundreds—if not thousands—of people having a great time, since the entire village (population 3,000) was invited. The inside of the community hall was transformed from its usual appearance, filled with colorful flowers and flowing white drapes, and the outside adorned with more decorations and stalls giving out food like ice cream, cake, and other traditional sweets and savory snacks. The drinks were also interesting, especially the sweet corn drink that Ella kept getting. After some time, we also ended up working at the drink stall and served many cups of a blue, vanilla-flavored drink. This wedding was quite different from American weddings that we’ve been to because there were so many food vendors and stalls as compared to the sit-down, pre-chosen meal that we’ve typically experienced. There were also many more people at this wedding—it was more of an open invitation, while many American weddings tend to be limited to just family and close friends. Another big difference we saw was the fact that the bride and groom were dressed in red, traditional clothing and after entering the wedding hall, they stayed there for a lengthy time so that guests could take pictures with them. In contrast, many American weddings usually have white wedding apparel, and the couple walks around the wedding hall to take pictures. Overall, we felt that many American weddings are usually much more structured and feel more formal, but the wedding we experienced here was looser and allowed most people to move around the community center freely throughout the shorter ceremony. As similarities, the bride and groom processed in with bridesmaids and groomsmen, cut the wedding cake together, used a hashtag for photos and received presents!
After our group got together to take photos, we split off and went to our houses to hang out. Some of us spent the time playing card games and cooling off in the only air conditioned rooms available, and others took showers and changed out of their traditional clothing from the wedding. At the end of the day, we had a nice barbecue at Neil and Benjamin’s house with foods like sausages, roasted chicken, fried rice, cake, and more mango, and also got to celebrate one of their homestay sibling’s 3rd birthday! It was nice being able to get the entire group together since some of our homes aren’t within walking distance, and playing with all of the little kids is always fun!
The two of us are staying with our main contact in the village, Angah, her mom, and her younger brother, who’s only a year younger than us (16). Angah has been one of the people in charge of helping our group with our daily activities, so everyone usually meets at our house for meetings, eGuide activities, and to journal. We’ve grown super close to Angah over the past few days, especially because we spend time together both during our scheduled activities and outside of them. Thanks to her, we’ve gotten to visit every homestay! The family has been super welcoming, and it’s been really fun sharing about our lives and learning new words in Malay to communicate better. We have a great time talking and laughing with her every day and have loved staying with her at her house. Our rooms are entirely pink, one of our favorite colors, which is something that makes us feel at home. Another plus is that our house is close to a lot of the others’ houses, so we can go on a short walk and say hi to our friends in other homestays.
Signing off for now,
Ava and Ella
