It's Just a Jump to the Left..

First Halloween party of my China experience is done and done!

It was a crazy busy day. Laura, Ryan and I started work around 9 trying to figure out last minute scheduling issues, designing certificates and making new shopping lists. We started decorating around noon. It felt that we had bought so much stuff, but once we put it all up, it wasn't as spectacular as I had dreamed it, but it still looked pretty good. I spent the afternoon running around making sure everyone had the right amount of supplies in their rooms and trying to figure out a check in system for the students. We had only been given their real names, not their Western names, and we couldn't really do too much with that information except to put them into groups. I put them into color coded groups and met with the TAs to give them a battle plan for the night. I just had enough time to get into my hippie "costume" before the students began to trickle in.

We had a bit of a late start with the festivities, because the checking in process wasn't as smoothed as we were hoping it would be. I had fun hanging out with the students in line checking out their costumes and practicing saying "Happy Halloween" with them. We'll have to work on that before the party for the little ones. The first fifteen minutes were designated to have the students make their own trick o' treat bags. My group was a little curious about why they had to decorate a bag, but I role modeled how to trick and treat and they got pretty excited about it, especially since I put a little stencil in their bags to try them out!

I then went to another classroom and started my station. I pre-taught a bunch of Halloween vocabulary words and then we played musical "flash cards" with them. Then, we watched the "Glee" kids perform the time warp and I taught them the dance and some of the students were able to sing along. I gave out prizes to the kids that were the most enthused with it. I had one pretty hysterical little boy go from not being excited at all to putting on his own show when he realized that there were prizes involved. I had to give one to him for the effort.

One of my groups was really late coming to see me and I was able to walk around the school a bit hearing everyone having fun. The CRs had turned off and dimmed the lights in the main hall of the school so it was a bit spooky. I had an awesome moment of relief that we actually pulled it off and the realization that I got to share a pretty awesome part of my tradition with the students and other teachers. It was a perfect night to have a bit of a magical moment. Then, my last group arrived and it was time to get to the time warp.

Ryan and I got busy cleaning up the rooms while the students were being ushered out. The funniest moment of the evening for me was when John, our EF school complex director was holding back parents in the stairwell and calling out students one at a time to meet their legal guardians that were picking them up. We had written on the tickets that parents were not allowed inside the school because we just didn't have enough room, and they took it so seriously!

There were a few bugs in our plans today, but it still turned out well. Happy Halloween weekend from Beijing, everyone!