The Monster Mash

For the first time in eight years, I did not wear my Pokemon costume for Halloween. I thought about bringing it as I was packing for the summer. It was all folded up at the bottom of my suitcase, but since I only had 2 suitcases for the upcoming year, it just didn't make the cut. Considering everything that has changed for me in the past 6 months, it seems strange that leaving Jigglypuff behind would feel like the worst part about growing up.

The way to get over sadness is, of course, to impose American culture on a country that doesn't celebrate Halloween! Shuting and I planned Halloween activities for the entire week--that's around 20 hours of mummy-wrapping, donut-eating, costume-making and mask parading in 5 days! And that doesn't include the throngs of children banging down our door to beg for candy between classes.

And here's photographic proof:




Favorite costumes include: the pork-jerky monster (aka the girl with wads of newspaper taped to her face) and the transformer (made of a box). More than anything, I'm proud to have such creative students--we didn't let them buy the materials for the costumes and I think they turned out quite nicely!

Basically, my week went a lot like this:



Happy Halloween everyone!