Happy (Belated) Halloween!

Halloween is not even known about here in the far East, so I spent the whole week teaching about/celebrating it in my classes. That meant five Halloween parties altogether! Shelby and I combined our classes and showed them part of The Shining. They had to create skits to explain how the story would end. The results were, needless to say, pretty hilarious. Here is a journal entry from my student, Lionstrong, which really captures the whole atmosphere of the event:

"A Treat on Halloween"

Trick or Treat?
For the first time, my fellow classmates and I enjoyed this exotic festival. No trick, only treat from Kitty and Shalby!
Shalby showed her creativity in her super-teacher's costume, while Kitty hided her gentleness in her black cat-like dresses. To begin with, they shared their past photoes of Halloween and introduced some of the main customs.
Then, they gave away candies in a round box where a moving hand with a scary voice was trying to stop the approaching hand for candy. Very interestingly, some girls even not dare to put out their lovely hands. Maybe that's what the two teachers wanted.
After that came the most appealing part. Not knowing what to do next, we were completely buried in the scary movie. When it came to a very very attractive spot, Kitty stopped the film.
She asked us to perform the final episode in our own ways with our own ideas. One minute late, the groups were divided. It is never boring to discuss what will happen both in films and reality.
At the time when the performance were on, our group only got a brief design. Of course, our performance were the shortest, less than one minute and one minute shorter than the required time. Some other groups were very imaginative, expressive and attractive.
At last, two teachers gave out the number of groups with good performance. It was quite surprising! We were in them! As a reward, Kitty treated us with real American Candy. It was delicious!
What a Halloween night!

Here is a picture from the costume contest organized by one of the Chinese professors. Some of the costumes were really creative, especially considering their limited knowledge about the holiday and their limited resources for making costumes. Many were made with only paper, paint and bamboo. You can see one the winners in front wearing black and carrying a scythe.

Here is a skit from one of my classes. Enough said.