A Chinese Halloween

Happy Halloween to all! As you all prepare for an evening of vampires, ghosts, ninjas, zombies, X-men, and the occasional Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, we wanted to let you know that we celebrated Halloween in style ourselves!

Every year, the foreign English teachers put on a Halloween party for all the Freshman English students. We learned that this party has become one of the most anticipated events of the entire school year for students. As one of our veteran teammates told us, "Your students will literally talk about this one party for their entire college career after they have gone to it." In fact, it is so popular that we have to print off non-duplicatable tickets so that only our Freshman students can get in. Apparently, in the past, students from all departments in the school try to get in and it becomes unmanageable for the teachers.

We spent the entire week preparing for the party by purchasing so much candy at the supermarket that we received the "crazy stares" from passing customers. We planned out the layout of the party, and had our LAs (library assistants) and several sophomore and junior volunteers help us for it. We were given 3 large classrooms to use for the party. 1 classroom became a haunted maze which I (David) worked the whole night. Another classroom was the craft room where we had face painting, jack-o-lantern drawing, and ghost crafting done which Anna worked. The final room was our game room where we had "eye ball" toss (a bunch of white ping pong balls we turned into eye balls), a bat ring toss, and musical chairs.

The previous week's freshmen class that we had was a lesson on Halloween in order to teach them a little about the holiday beforehand and to get them more excited about the party. It wasn't difficult to get them excited. They pretty much did that all on their own. In fact, when Anna passed out the tickets to one of her classes, one of the boys in the class stood up and kissed the ticket. We also made as much emphasis as week could for them to come in costumes (which many of them did to our delight).

I have to admit, there is something quite rewarding about being able to scare the living daylights out of freshmen students in a haunted house one week and give them a test the next, haha!

As per the rumors of past parties, this one received as much mention as we had expected. After the party was over, WeChat (their version of Facebook) exploded with posts and pictures from the Halloween party. We also possibly took more pictures in this one evening than any other time I can recall.

We are definitely looking forward to doing this again next year. We hope that you all have a happy and sugar-induced Halloween there too!

Minnie Mouse and her beat up soccer beau.

Our teammate, Travis, came as a mummy, or as one student perceived.....an astronaut.

Anna with a portion of one of her classes. The student on the right is the one who kissed his ticket when he received it.

One of our fellow teacher's sons. Ironically, he really wanted the Captain America symbol and Anna delivered.

As soon as David started posing with scary faces, no student wanted him to smile for any picture.

Students lined up to take pictures with us. Felt a little bit like we were characters in the Magic Kingdom (which is funny considering Anna was Minne Mouse).

Another of Anna's classes there for the party!

Anna received a lot of gifts from students. This was a stuffed animal dog that is shaped so that you hug it in the middle of its body. Chinese refer to these as "boyfriend gifts". Thankfully it wasn't a boy that gave it to her.

Anna taught one of our LAs to facepaint too.

Students crammed into the craft room.

Musical chairs.

The director of the English Department came with her son. He came dressed as a wizard.

Several teachers came with their children. It felt like we were hosting a China Fall Festival at times!

One of the Chinese English teachers went all out in her Snow White outfit!

Two of our students took us to dinner the night after the party. This is a style of cooking in the Northeast called "dun" which means "stew". The center of the table is a wood-burning fire which heats the cast iron pot in the middle and you each right out of it. Might be the best food we've had in China yet!