Halloween

I know this post is coming a little late, but we've been so distracted with fun things lately that it's taken a while to get it uploaded.

So about a week before Halloween day, we had a meeting with the kindy teachers about how they would celebrate Halloween. After a long while of interesting discussion, half of which was in Chinese, we cleared up a few important misconceptions and the Halloween train started rolling. Every teacher in the whole kindergarten spent every spare minute of that next week cutting out pumkins, witches, ghosts, cats, bats, and more pumpkins. They actually did a great job of decorating. The only thing they asked us to help with was carving a couple of pumpkins. Unfortunately, they do not grow giant pumpkins in China and the largest pumpkin they could find was still pretty small. Here are some pictures of our masterpieces.

As the only true westerners within the city boundaries, we were asked to be the party hosts. It was a blast. We started with a few fun video clips about Halloween, split up into 2 groups and went trick-or-treating to all the classrooms where teachers and parents were waiting to hand out the candy. It was so satisfying to see the joy on the childrens' faces when they had the chance to experience trick-or-treating for the first time. Although their bags were small, they were still very proud of their loot and were not against sharing, so that was good.



This is April gettin' some candy, with Hank in the bottom left trying to control his excitement. Notice the pizza hut bag in the bottom right.

This is Mike. He was filling his character very well. He's one of my smartest super babies.

This is Highland. Although she looks dumbfounded, she is also one of my smartest students.

This is Michael. He is so little and cute. Just thought I'd throw in a picture.

This is Jack. The "Lumber Jack". He was twirling around with his cape to show me his super hero powers.

These are a few of the "Small Babies". They are all cats. Gene, in the orange, is practically a genius.

This is Re Re. He is like the Jugernaut. He just runs in every direction and you can't stop him.

After the trick-or-treating, we helped to host a dance party and games for the children and parents. At the end of the party, we helped pass out "pumpkin pie", which was actually a steamed bun that was slightly pumkin flavored. Good enough. We also took a group picture with us in the middle of all the action. Check it out.