a few snippets of life in the Lui house

The holidays were packed with family meals, all day shopping trips and various other shenanigans.  It was a fabulous time, and all together too much to blog individually, so I'll leave you with a few of my favorite tidbits...

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As we walk home from fabric shopping for the white wedding dress, the future mother-in-law began explaining the Chinese dress to my mom and I.  There are two options.  The first is the more traditional one (which she wore) that has a long skirt/dress with a jacket over it.  The second is the slinkier one with the diagonal seem across the chest and the slit up to your hip.

After describing them--and promising to find pictures--she asked me which did I want to wear: the one with the jacket or the "chee poh" dress?

The entire walk home, my mom and I enlisted evasion tactics 101 by insisting that she choose since it's representing her culture.  It wasn't until we got back and could ask Hon that mom and I discovered the answer to the question looming over the entire conversation:  "Do you think that's the Chinese name for it or is she calling it the "cheapo" dress?"

We all later had a good laugh about this as both "cheapo" and "qi pao" were clearly defined for all.  Though why she was using the Mandarin pronunciation of "qi pao" is beyond all of us--my mother-in-law included.

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So the day that Hon's parents cooked a banquet feast for mine, they also gave them two bottles of wine.  My parents, being the guests, brought a bottle of rum for Hon's parents as a thank you present.  But then Hon's parents gave them very nice chopsticks.  And then they gave them a little box of chocolates.  So while shopping, my mom bought my future mother-in-law a big box of Godiva chocolates.  "I get it," she said, "I get it.  It will be a never ending exchange of gifts."  At which point Hon handed them a 'thank-you' red envelope from his parents.

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"Dad called you 'a woman who carries water'."  

This is a compliment.  No, really.  I kid you not.  

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Hon's mom made me a fabulous knitted hat.  Well, technically she made it for Hon, who grimaced when she put it on him, and then I tried it on and looked rather fashionably floppy.  When she finished it and I tried it on, the future father-in-law could not stop laughing.  I mean this literally.  There was a five minute period when he was having such a hard time sitting upright because he was laughing so hard.  Apparently he thought we were being silly when we called it fashionable ("it is fashion!") because old women in China wore hats like this when he was growing up.

Which lead to my newest canto lesson:  Lei chi sien.  "You crazy."  And I have full permission to call the future father-in-law this.