Halloween followed me.

That's right, halfway across the world and into a land known to most people back home only through movies depicting slow boats or flying monks and the strangely American tradition of dressing up and demanding candy is still alive and well. Halloween lives mostly because my school really teaches American English and American Culture over other places and regions.

The teachers here got very into the festive spirit because for them this is only the second year they have ever celebrated the holiday and so the whole idea is still very new to them. They spent the whole week before hand listening to ghost stories and planning our school's outing. In the first picture, in the foreground we have Cathy(left) and Maggie(right), Cathy being the head teacher of XiGong school. In the back, left to right are Grace, Lisa, and Lily.


The school, for the second year had arranged with some local business to host a place for the students to go Trick-Or_Treating though in a format far more in line with a business. Instead of walking door to door the students marched with their classes and looked for Jack-O-Lanterns placed in the doorways of local retail shops in a well-to-do part of town. There the students had to sing a song in English to get their candy. In the Second photo on the left is me in a costume the teachers made for me the day of and on the right is Sean the new recruit from Tasmania.

After this was done we all gathered to take some pictures. Trick-Or-Treating did not stop on Halloween however, instead the teachers arranged for various classes to interact with each other at school. Students brought candy for each other and then gave each other gifts of sweets in exchange for songs. This made all of the students very generous in a way not seen in America, they gave their Candy away freely.




For the many students who did not participate in the the Halloween March, as the school was calling it, there was a small Halloween party being held at the school where the best stereo system they could set up was playing spooky ghost stories in Chinese and they teachers had various activities for them. I don't know too much of what they were doing since I was well away dressed as some skeletal bat person thing.

On November first it was back to classes as normal except for the inter-class trick or treating which frequently happened during my classes. This resulted in me being given many candies because the students wanted to share with me even when I could not give them any candy in return. One student would have earned an instant A if I did the grading for him when he gave me a small dove bar...

In other news we have been having some new teachers come through our school though there is no guarantee that they will stay very long because the school has very high expectations of its Chinese teachers. Before it was Lenny and Susan of whom Lenny lasted through the first month of the three month training program. This last week Jessica and Sissy joined the "Joy Family" and I personally am glad for this as both of them are rather good looking. Now as all of you know I really wouldn't know how to be a hound dog of a man if I wanted to be, but I certainly don't mind adding a few stunningly attractive young women to my list of friends or to the room of mostly very attractive teachers already there. I know its not kosher to date people you work with (though this has not been expressly forbidden) but I am starting to think this is more a guideline than a rule... savy?

Anyways, this is my Halloween blog, in keeping with the season. You might even get something at Thanksgiving but I am not eating Turkey this year (I will take pictures of dinner though). I will post up more pictures from ChengDu as well as some of the cute kids from school over the next few weeks. If I don't get busy I plan to have a Cheng Du recap post up tomorrow.

Lastly... I have found a way to read comments you send me, they interest me so I would like to hear them again. Alternately you can email me at loch.ness003@gmail.com because I would like to hear from you and whats going on in your lives.