HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I hope everyone is enjoying all things spooky and sweet! 

I on the other hand have been battling a cold the last week and have been slacking on the blog. Sorry bout that. Aside from that my Halloween day has been pretty awful. Not every day is perfect in China. I am super worried about tomorrow because all of my student's parents will be coming to watch me teach and give criticism. I would be okay with this in America because I'm confident in my ability to speak English to English speaking children. However, speaking English to a group of 3-4 year old Chinese children, 16 of which are boys and 4 are girls, is not the easiest thing in the world to do. I struggle on a daily basis to teach them while they continue to scream and run around the room. And now their parents get to witness the chaos. I'm incredibly scared just thinking about it. My fellow English teacher's tell me not to worry but they have the pleasure of teaching much smaller classes of older children who can actually speak. We have two very different experiences. We will see what the day brings tomorrow! I will just keep trying to stay positive. It will be a great day. It will be a great day. It will be a great day.

Now on to the original reason for this post: Halloween! It is genuinely one of my favorite holidays most likely due to the fact that I have the biggest sweet tooth ever. Side note the prune candy and others of the Chinese variety are disgusting, all I really want is a pile of Reese's right about now but I am stuck with just looking at pictures of them. Eat a few for me!

We've been so busy preparing for "Parent's Day" that we aren't doing anything to celebrate today. I forgot it was Halloween until Andrew reminded me this afternoon. Believe it or not there aren't reminders of pumpkins and witches everywhere in China. We actually celebrated last Friday with our Pre-School. 

After trick or treating that night, we performed a play that Wayne wrote himself and ended with a bang as we danced off stage to our choreographed version of "Thriller". It was somewhat of a spin off of The Wizard of Oz. The plot was simple enough for the children to understand. The Mad Scientist (played by myself) demands that her lab helper Igor (Wayne) go into the village and find the remaining three parts she needs to complete her greatest creation: Frankenstein (Andrew). He goes into the woods and gets an arm from the wolf (Lucy-a teacher in Wayne's class). Next, he gets a heart from a bat (Bella- from Hannah's class). Lastly, he gets a brain from a mummy in the cemetery (Judy- from my class). They all return to the Mad Scientist who completes Frankenstein. After a few MUAHAHAHA's Frankenstein comes to life and walks toward the crowd to give them a good fright. It was probably the best part of the whole play because Andrew was hiding under a sheet on a table the whole time and I painted his face green with black circles around the eyes and some stitches. He probably looked terrifying to the children. And if you're wondering Hannah's role was as our devoted narrator. We all worked really hard to create the sets and props. We practiced everyday for a week. We could not have done a better job the night of the performance. It was a good feeling to be done.

After we ended with our dance we lowered the large white sphere aka the pinata moon. The idea of a pinata is completely foreign in China and if you can picture how viscous and excited a group of children get when a pile of candy drops from the sky then multiply that by 50. It was completely chaotic. I was trying to reach into the mass of people to grab candy and throw it to all the kids who had no chance of getting any candy. I successfully went down once and returned uninjured. After trying a second time I gave up because it was too scary for even me.

 

I think the children had a great Halloween and it was really cute to hear them say "trick or treat" as they got candy from the shops on our street. I saw a couple batman costumes, some princesses, but mostly pumpkins. I really couldn't take pictures because Hannah's camera died after one picture, my camera is broken, and my old iPhone 3GS takes some not so good pictures as witnessed above. #bloggerproblems

Although it doesn't feel like Halloween as I go to bed tonight it is definitely fall as the temperature has dropped here in Zhangjiagang. I miss my cinnamon candles, hot chocolate, and of course Halloween candy. With that in mind I am off to cuddle under my covers dream of fall comforts and watch the Addam's Family. Ohhhhh on second thought I think I would rather have an Almond Joy right now. Mmmmm.

Happy Halloween everyone! Have a Spooktacular Day!