Halloween

time to talk about the halloween celebration even tho it's about time for tgiving.  since hall fell on a sun we had our parties, at the english school and the kindergarten, on the 28th, the day after i arrived back here after visiting my families.  ths students were excited about what we were going to do, the teachers kept telling me how excited they were, and even brought some pumpkins with them to school from their homes.  i had found some templates online for different kinds of bats, ghosts, and pumpkins, and even a witch and made patterns and used them to decorate the school, the stol where we were to have the party, and the kindergarten.  all the teachers helped me cut out and color the decorations and put them up so it was really a team effort!  the 28th i went in to school to carve the first pumpkin and then the students did the rest during the school day.  (next year i want to have carving tools and diffferent patterns for the pumpkins.)  the i went to the apt ao prepare for the kindergarten.  i also made comies of various hall creatures for them to color, cut out if they anted to and either tke them home or leave them to decorate their classroom.  the students at the eng school said they wanted food for our party so after the kindergarten i went back home and finished making some finger sandwiches, i had help from one of our teachers not from here who stayed behind to see the celebration.  it was going to be her first American "praznuvic" or tradition, celebration and she wanted to stay for it and she helped me with the finger sandwiches.   then at 6 pm, after a little "real" dinner we started to decorate and prepare the stol.  my coworkers really helped out by bringing food and with the decorations.  i had found some more chilling stories i was going to read and try to scare the students.  it worked but the only problem we had with this was i was to read them in english.  while most of the students know english enough to follow along it was hard and lots "got lost in the translation."  the man who drives for our school hid in the kitchen and at certain times made noises and some of the students jumped.  then we read the stories in B too but it was kinda anti-climatic.  we had a hall quiz and then the dancing started!  tom i will post some pics but the students really got the whole costume idea!  we had a mummy to young men dressed up and babas, grandmas!  it was really funny and a good time was had by all.  my mom and step-dad found my pacer shorts, believe it or not i didn't ask them to look for them, and a friend of mine from the fieldhouse got me a pacer jersey with my name on it that i brought along with me so for the eng school party i was a pacer.  at the kindergarten i wore the tigger mask, tail, and bowtie that my parents brought over for me.  i figured the tigger costume was a little young for high school kids!  i think they had a good time with the American halloween!  about 2/3 days after hall my counterpart started asking me about tgiving and said that she explained to the students that was the next holiday and how we could do something then too.  oh i have to tell you!  whenever i talked about hall i always said it was that next sunday.  i explained to the kindergartners about getting candy and all and going from house to house.  the director's son, of the kindergarten, is in my older group and the week after hall when i went to the kindergarten i ran into her and she tol me that over the hall weekend her son asked her if they could go to American on sunday for halloween.  how cute is that!!!  tom...piccs of hall but right now it's bedtime.  sorry this was so long but lots to explain!  love to all!