Wedding Year Continues... in San Antonio

Near River Center as we listened to this Peruvian band.

So, as you all know, I have been invited to and/or went to so many weddings in the last year. At any given time, I had 3-4 wedding invites sitting on my desk. This time, it was Arsema and Teddy (Dominican Republic) and Violeta and Michael (San Antonio) on the same day, June 23rd. Violeta's wedding won out, because I've known her longer, the trip was affordable and it's in a place I had never been before.

I arrived in San Antonio on Friday morning and met up with Violeta (the bride), Erin (Noxon) and Amanda (Gomes) to some pretty mild weather. It was unusually rainy that weekend and cooled it off. We rented a car with GPS, because none of us were familiar with the city and we didn't want to waste too much time trying to figure things out with a map.

First pix at the airport.

Later Friday night, we went to dinner with Vio's new family to this nice restaurant that had female Mariachi singers, apparently the only All-female Mariachi band in the city. Of COURSE, I totally forgot my camera.

After that, I finally got settled into the motel to wait for Cheryan to come in from Canada at around midnight. Apparently, when there's lots of rain, the crickets come out. Ooooh, they came out all right and they came out into my room! I was terrified. The weird thing was that NO ONE else in the motel had that experience, so it was like I brought the plague with me or something, because the motel manager switched me into another room and I had the same problem, but not as bad. Weird!

Anyways, Saturday was the big wedding day, but us girls went to breakfast with her family at this very nice and very cheap Mexican restaurant for breakfast. After that, we went to the Famous RiverWalk for some good old sightseeing and some lunch. See pix...

River Walk in San Antonio

Cheryan, Amanda (Center), Mommy-to-be, Erin (far right) waiting to take the River Walk boat tour.

Saint Antonio

After doing a little sightseeing, we were ready to get down to the business of helping Violeta get her wedding on! The wedding started at 7PM and it was held at the Koehler House. It was a very beautiful house with beautiful chandeliers, a winding staircase and beautiful landscaping.

Violeta with her father.

The blushing bride, Violeta Garza, with her new husband. Cultural Connections factoid: Violeta is Mexican American and Michael is Dutch American. If you'll remember Celia and Ken's wedding, she is 1/2 Indian and Spanish and Ken is Japanese.

The Return of Bianca Sukiyama

Ok, so Bianca Sukiyama is coming back. I am VERY excited to announce that I am working on my final draft for a collection of short stories most of which will revolve around the character Bianca Sukiyama of the "The Adventures of Bianca Sukiyama" series. I had originally written this story back in my freshman year of college as one short story, but when I moved to Japan, I decided to fill in the blank with a series of stories. The stories were illustrated by my friend, Amanda Gomes, and I hope to continue to use her illustrations in the new book.

I am planning to self-publish the latest in these "Adventures" and hope to put it out there mostly at online book sellers. My collection of poems, "The Internal Music Series" will be published at a later date. I figured that this was just the time to make all of this happen.

I hope to have good news about the progress of my manuscript sometime in August. In the meantime, continue to read my blog!