W-EEK-END, October 31st - November 2nd
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Friday, just in time for Halloween, I receive a care package in the mail from my mom. It includes a big, hairy, pipe-cleaner and yarn spider (love it!) to help my minimal Halloween decor, and four packets of stevia to help my boring diet. I am SO excited to try using the stevia and make some muffins and cakes and all sorts of goodies!
But only four packets means I will have to be a little choosy with my first experiments. For now I am consumed with decorating. Today is Halloween and the place only has a few touches, so I spend the day trying to make a last-ditch attempt at getting the place thoroughly spooked out. It's all right I guess. And it's fun to do.
In the evening, there is salsa dancing, and the only sign of Halloween is a foreigner in a Frankenstein T-shirt. Hmmph. I should have worn something like that. I did get a little goth with my look for the night though to be in the spirit, even if no one else is.
At the salsa club, we make the announcement that we will begin teaching next week for free. We really want to teach before we leave here; it's sad that they are so eager and we are a resource to them that they're not getting to use. We also miss teaching, or at least I do. So we've decided to do it for free so there are no legal issues. We'll see though, some people don't seem like they will let us get away with giving them free classes.
Saturday is spent getting ready for the Paz Halloween party. Since we had no idea if we'd even be here, we never really planned costumes. So we have a fabulous (hypoglycemia-friendly) meal at a Malay cuisine restaurant, and spend the entire afternoon in Toys-R-Us trying to come up with something clever for Regin to wear. Shall we glue cars to him and make him a street? Shall we glue puzzle pieces and make his hair wild and call him "puzzled"? Nah! Forget it, we have no time left. Let's just buy one of the PREMADE COSTUMES AVAILABLE IN THE STORE, WHO KNEW!?!?!? It's no fun, but it's done, and it's cute. He's a baby skeleton. What about me and George? We have about an hour before we have to be at the party. So I grab the only adult costume items they have at Toys R Us, tattoo sleeves and a granny wig. Great! I'm a tattooed granny! We run over to The Reject Shop to buy some cheap ill-fitting "granny" clothes for me, and a cheap shirt we can shred and paint for George to be a shark attack vicitim. George's costume is kind of lame, especially since we keep the gore to a minimum since this is mostly a kids party we're going to.
The party is fun. The real pleasure for me is to check out all the amazing decorations Carmen and family have put up. Wow! I thought I'd done OK, but now I'm thinking I totally held back. I'm inspired to do more in the future with our house. Meanwhile, at the Paz house, kids are running around being kids on Halloween. Looks like the Paz kids are the local ambassadors of Halloween like I was in England and teaching the other kids the beauty of this American tradition. Even as kids we're cultural imperialists! Haha! I wonder if any of the locals here thought it was a birthday party like the kids thought at my parties. I wonder if they received gifts. Then again, these are mostly kids from the international school. There might not be any local kids present.
Fernando tells us that last year there was nothing Halloween-related to be found in Penang. Now he's amazed to see that there are sorts of Halloween things around here. It's nice for the people far from home who want to participate in their usual traditions, and it's great for those who think getting a little ghoulish once a year sounds like cathartic and silly fun. But it's a little sad to me that American culture is spreading like wildfire. Caroline, in the UK, and Beinta in the Faroes both mentioned (here and on Facebook) about Halloween parties they were going to. They had never heard of Halloween parties when I lived in England. Next thing you know, the Fourth of July celebration here won't be an expat thing. And in another 10 or 20 years when we someone wakes up after passing out drunk in who knows where in the world, he may as well ask which part of the US he's in.
But for now, I know where I am. I'm in Penang.
Nothing much going on on Sunday except my excitement over pancakes. And now I'm noticing that there are posters all over town for a Halloween party at a local club. I'm thinking three things looking at the posters: it would have been fun to go, why is everyone so eager to Americanize, and where the heck did these people in the picture get their costumes?
3 comments:
I'm not sure that it was halloween that we hadn't heard of, just trick or treating. And when we were kids we had our own version of that anyway: mischief night, which I think was the night before Bonfire night and was like trick or treat, but without the treats! Mischief night is a very Yorkshire thing though, not sure they do it anywhere else in the Country, and its probably been overtaken by Trick or Treat by now.
No I know there was a Halloween type thing in England, but what I wrote was (and maybe you saw this post before I corrected that!) you guys hadn't heard of Halloween parties. I remember getting more than one gift because a few of you assumed it must be my birthday. Absolutely hadn't heard of trick-or-treating, that's for sure. I tried to go trick-or-treating on our street when we first moved there and when I said, "Trick or treat!" the person standing in the doorway said, "ummmmm.... trick!" I was very confused and didn't know how to explain that it wasn't an actual question. I think I just said something like, "You're supposed to give me candy!" Haha!
So you guys trick or treat now???
Sorry, I probably misread it. Yeah, its caught on now. Not good since I'm never organised enough to have bought sweets so normally end up with the house being egged (not nice to clean up!) So Plan B these days is just to be out on Halloween!!
Post a Comment