how i celebrated in a land of no halloween

i love halloween. in my opinion, it's in the "big 3" of holidays. you dress up. you eat candy. you party. nothing but fun involved. so as you can imagine, i couldnt just let my 2nd out of country halloween pass without a fuss. especially when 2/3rds of my job is cross cultural exchange.

Halloween this year fell on the day of my first classes, so i decided to take advantage. I would do some halloween themed lessons. i would bring a jack-o-lantern. i would make caramel apples. i would wear a costume.

I decided to be a black cat. simple. classic. easy. The week before i bought a headband and attached some ears. i also made a tail. i dressed in black, and used eye liner to draw on some whiskers. sweet!

we dont have orange pumkins here, but i thought, who cares! i bought a whitish green one and carved it up.

the caramel apples were a blast. the people who i bought the caramel from surely thought i was going on a binge eating spree, but i managed to find enough to make about 20 apples. they were delicious.

The big day arrived and i lugged all of my paraphenalia to the youth center. when i arrived i added my makeup and put on my costume. i lit the pumkin and put him outside. i brought candy which i gave out to all of my students, and some sweet halloween sticker. they learned vocabulary like vampire, witch, full moon, monster, pumkin, etc, etc.

i think they thought i was a loon. i've never been laughed at so much in my life. it was worth it.

when class was over i decided to bring some apples to my host family, so i wore my costume across town. i was greeted with much laughter. i gave them stickers and apples, and tried to explain why i was looking so crazy. me to a 70 year old berber man, " today is a holiday in america. everyone dresses like this. we eat candy!" him to me, "cat! makeup!"

when i was ready to leave one of my soccer girls said to me "teresa, take off that tail and the ears. people will laugh at you!" i took them off. my whiskers were with me until i made it home, where i finally washed them off.