H-A-double L-O-double U-double E-N

Those of you who know me, know that I LOVE Halloween. In my opinion, there aren’t enough days in the year where adults get to dress up in costume. (Hence the Superhero and Villain parties, and PRIDE in Janurary…)

I love costumes because they allow us to stop taking ourselves so seriously. Let’s face it, it’s hard to take yourself seriously when you’re dressed as a taco or giant martini glass. Also, if you don’t dress up at Halloween, it means that you NEVER dress up. Come on, every day we wake up and get to be ourselves. Halloween is one of the few times we can be anyone…or anything!

Now that I have you sufficiently convinced about the spectacular opportunity that is Halloween, you can imagine how bummed I was to be leaving the country for a whole year, including October 31st. Last year, as one robot in a flashing, dancing, music-playing robot quadruplet, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad that I wouldn’t be celebrating next year. (Actually, I told Kelly that we were going to dress up and go to the Forbidden City even if no one in the country knew what we were doing. )

You can imagine my surprise, and delight, when I found out that there IS some Halloween in Beijing! Purely brought over from American expats, it was difficult to predict how the celebration would unfold. I was just excited that in my classroom I was able to make word searches with the words “haunted” and “goblins”, and to see my kids all dressed up. There’s nothing like 6 and 7 year-olds dressed as princesses and wizards to make a Friday afternoon more memorable.

It was also a treat because of the newness and strangeness of the Holiday. Some of the kids were having their first Halloween, which is a different experience than growing up being a pea pod or pumpkin at the end of each October. My assistant has never dressed up, and really got a kick out of my home made costume. (Details to come).

Favorite Part of Halloween in School: Parading with my students with tambourines and maracas through the campus and into the Cafeteria, where none of the other students from the Chinese school were dressed up. As I’ve mentioned, my school is a small international school on the large campus of Tsinghua University. We’re always the only ones not dressed in uniforms, but this time we really stood out, Halloween-style. It was a blast!