Where In The World Is Kelita? : Halloween is OVER...HAHAHA

Well, I can have a life again! Ever since we got back from our vacation in the beginning of October, it has been crunch time for Halloween. Especially this past week.

Who knew that at one of the grocery stores they would have a little Halloween section???

Don't get me wrong, I love Halloween! I worked in a Haunted House for three years. Which is why I signed up to be the "official" Halloween coordinator. Just getting info from our Chinese coordinators to our group, making sure things run smoothly and we got things in on time. It was actually a lot of work.

We also ended up having an additional Halloween party, the week before Halloween. There is a new English school they are trying to open up, and to get people interested in the school we've gone there for a few events and extra teaching, and they wanted us to have a Halloween party there too. We performed our dance, and played Halloween games as well as host a little "trick or treating".

Trick or Treat Table; Pretty sweet decorations

Clara and Kayla

Throughout the week of Halloween at our school, we had different "dress up days". Monday was Orange Day, Tuesday was Pajama Day, Wednesday was Crazy Hair Day, Thursday was Black Day, and Friday was MisMatch/Opposite Day! I have some pictures of crazy hair day and mismatch day: On mismatch day I also had my hair half in a bun and half in a braid.

Linda and Mavis had the best crazy hair out of my classes

For our school we teach however there was a lot more! We had to come up with two performances for each of our classes. For Carina's and my classes, we taught them a Halloween song called "Halloween is coming" with a little dance, and we taught them a country dance to the song "Boot Scootin Boogie".

I was a little disappointed in the performance Halloween night though. Because my kids practiced SO HARD, they knew ALL the words, but the music was so loud we couldn't hear them at all :( I just hoped the parents were still impressed.

We also made tons of decorations for the school. Since my class was on the third floor I was in charge of decorations for thay floor with the other three senior teachers. Our theme was graveyard, we had tombstones with all the kids' names, a zombie hand, a giant skeleton, spider web and lots of spiders, hanging ghosts and bats. I think our floor turned out the best....only I forgot to take a picture admid all the hubabaloo :o

We also had to come up with a haunted house. We ended up having 4 rooms total. The pumpkin room and dining room weren't very scary, that way kids who were scared could leave. The last two rooms, the graveyard and witch room were supposed to be the scary ones. I ended up helping out in the dining room. We had grapes and spaghetti kids could touch (eyeballs and intestines) and a platter with a real head (thanks to Shalee)! It turned out pretty awesome, especially with the limited supplies and time we had. I didn't get a lot of pictures of the finished Haunted House but here are a few in the process:

For our group dance, we all pretended to be creepy dolls and there wasn't much time to change into different makeup for the Haunted House so I just put on a cloak and called it good.

Carina decided to dress up as a zombie in the graveyard...yeah she made a few kids cry. Especially one of our students, Karmen. She is a tough cookie I totally thought she would not be scared in the haunted house but she barely made it into the graveyard and she was running out, dragging her parents with her screaming. Poor girl.

While some of us were in the Haunted House, some teachers were helping out with games and trick or treating.

The kids costumes were great- and so were their parents! Seriously some went all out. One of my home group kids-Lok- won the award for best costume out of all the senior kids!

Lok with his parents

This is April, one of my students. Her English is REALLY GOOD she knows a lot of words and she doesn't stop talking ;) she was one of the "hostesses" of the night

This is Celina, our main coordinator at school

Snow White (Serena) and I

A pirate (Leona), a creepy doll (me) and a Superhero (Rachel)

A skeleton (Ami) and creepy doll

A zombie (rachel) and a creepy doll

One of the best things was we got to eat lunch that day with our kids!! And it was buffet style. Seriously I LOVE my kids!! They make me happy :)

Kris, Mavis, Tim, Jim, Cherry, Matthew

Left to right: Linda, Karmen, Aaron, Emily, Connor

Billy, Debby, David, April, Judy

Karmen and Lok

David

Aaron and Linda

Aaron Linda Karmen and Lok; this is the table I sat with :)

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Oh it was also my birthday Monday. My room got heart attacked! Hearts everywhere and some nice notes. In the evening we went out for dinner, and then got dessert (I got cheesecake sooo yummy), then played games (pictionary telephone and mafia, of course!)

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After Halloween I spent all Saturday with my Chinese friends (literally 12 hours). I went to the park with Sarah and her daughter Laura, then we ate lunch with two other families and their daughters. It was a farm with little huts to eat in- all the food is grown and raised right there on the farm!

I had lots of fish-actually not as bad as I thought. Also pigs feet and pigs stomach....I went back for more so I guess it wasn't too bad ;). It was the type of place where they put all the food in the middle and you just take whatever you want from several dishes.

After we went to another park, Sarah's husband was having a work activity there. They had teams and were blindfolded, having to get to the other side without stepping on the land mines. It was really funny to watch actually.

Then Susan invited me over for dinner where Allie and Carina met

up with me. We had lots of crazy little girls- Laura who is Sarah's daughter, Melanie and Yoyo who are Susan's daughters, and then Jacklyn who is Pheobe's daughter (also lives in the neighborhood). Apparently they make dinner the same way- the mom makes several different dishes and you just take some of each. It seems like a lot of work. She also said they don't make leftovers, they make whole new dishes every day! Because of course, that is the wife's job in China, especially with the high class. I asked Susan if she liked to cook and she said "I have no choice!" haha. Of course I helped her by doing a lot of chopping and she said I am a great helper!