Spooky Celebrations

It's the most wonderful time of the year!! Skeletons and ghosts, pumpkins and apples, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger, the boogie man and Count Dracula. What's not to love about the scariest time of the year when the air is so crisp, you can almost taste it? The leaves look as though they are on fire and our hands are gooey as we carve our jack-o-lanterns.

Cold weather, colorful leaves, pumpkins, scarves, apple cider, haunted houses, hay rides, and apple picking has swept through America but they are nowhere to be seen in China (the temperature has finally dropped to below 70 and let's hope it stays that way!!). So, since this is my favorite time of year and I'm not getting anything from China, I decided to bring the autumnal festivities to Hangzhou.

On October 16th, I was in charge of the English Corner on campus. I was a bit nervous. I have never been to an English Corner before and I was pretty lost when it came to coming up with something to do with the students. I ended up deciding to have a small Halloween party and we carved jack-o-lanterns out of watermelons (because pumpkins are impossible to find here in China!). I brought the watermelons into the English Corner, handed the students knives and sent them to work... and they were AWESOME! For being a group of kids who have never carved a jack-o-lantern in their lives, they were willing to get dirty and sticky as they hollowed out their watermelons and they managed to all carve great faces into fantastic jack-o-lanterns.

Check out my last post for a tutorial on watermelon jack-o-lanterns right here! Yes, it's a bit late to make one for Halloween night (though they are super spooky as they glow bright red) but it is definitely something to think about for the 4th of July!

On Saturday, October 25th, all the foreigners got together with some of our Chinese friends and threw a classic Halloween party complete with candy, costumes, scary music, and games.

Last year, I was slightly disappointed in my inability to whip up a halfway decent costume (I was a Little White Lie... check it out!) so this year I had to redeem myself! Adam and I decided to combine our powers for this Halloween and I got to dress up in my first couple's costume EVER (it's the little things in life)!!

ZOMBIES!!!

Somehow, we managed to find face paint in China (we actually found a whole store selling Halloween costumes and decorations). I've had some experience when it comes to putting on zombie makeup so I was up for the challenge!!

When I was in high school in 2006 and 2007, I debuted and reprised the role of Judy in "Night of the Living Dead" at the Ghostlight Theatre. While I played one of seven humans in the cast, I was surrounded by actors who portrayed the role of the zombies and each of them were artists. It was my first real introduction to zombies and got me interested in the idea behind the walking undead.

2006 cast of "Night of the Living Dead"

2007 cast of "Night of the Living Dead"... how awkward... we didn't even change our clothes!!

I left the Ghostlight Theatre when I went away to school but I brought my love of the undead with me! In 2009, I helped start up and run Oswego's first Michael Jackson flash mob event, "Thrill the World." I started it along with some of my friends Jillian, Mandy, Johnny Mac, and Becca and the five of us advertised, raised money for charity, and taught the entire dance of "Thriller" for the worldwide event in October. Everyone dressed as zombies complete with awesome makeup and gallons of fake blood. It was a huge success! So much so, that we did it a second year in 2010.

2009--my first zombie makeup ever!            2010--perfected the burst blood vessels

2009 Thrill the World gang!
Johnny Mac, me, Becca, Mandy, and Jill

 Enough of the zombie back story. When Adam mentioned the idea of going as a zombie bride and groom I jumped on it like a fat kid on crumb cake. Now the face paint we found was awful and greasy but it was better than nothing! I put my zombie makeup skills to the test and made up both myself and Adam (I have never put zombie makeup on another person before). It didn't come out good enough to impress my zombie expert pals back home in the states but it was enough to terrify all of our Chinese friends that came to the party!!

 Michelle and Judah!!

The gang and Teil

Some other costumes that our friends dressed up as was a rubber chicken, the cookie faerie, a leprechaun, and two little girls came as a fabulous witch and Rapunzel!

After we admired each other's costumes and ate some delicious food and cookies (thanks to the cookie faerie, Karin!), it was time to get down and dirty and place some classic Halloween games!

The first was the doughnut game. Classic! I have not played this game, let alone thought of it since I was 9 years old in the 4th grade dressed up as Dorothy and my brother was the Scarecrow. Tie a string around a doughnut, hang it from a pole, try to eat it with no hands. It's funny when you have a bunch of expats who played this game when they were little try it. It's even funnier when you get a bunch of Chinese kids who barely ever eat doughnuts much less off a string without their hands! Priceless...

Up next? The mummy game!! We gave every group toilet paper and told them they had two minutes to wrap their partner into the best mummy they can... only to tell them that they then have to race. We really are a wicked bunch!

Last was a Halloween tradition that completes any party: bobbing for apples!! The girls were not too thrilled about the idea of putting their entire head in a bucket of water but in the end a few of them were brave enough to do it as well as all the foreigners. We even had two random strangers who were standing by and watching get apples!! Halloween has come to Hangzhou and it doesn't even know it!!

Champions!

All in all, it was quite a successful party--it introduced our Chinese friends to the insanity that is Halloween and it allowed the crazy expats to relive the insane Halloween parties that we went to in elementary school. Nothing better!!

Sadly, not all my students could come to the parties happening around the city and around campus (yay for not having big enough spaces to hold 200+ people), so I decided to bring Halloween to my students in class.

It's always fun introducing your students to holidays and traditions that you have grown up with. Something that is completely normal like going from door to door and demanding candy (basically begging) is seen as this strange and almost silly thing to them! 

Dressed all in black, donning my witch's hat, and grabbing my jack-o-lantern bucket, I surprised my students with a little Halloween party in class complete with candy (despite the university's insane rules of no food or drinks in the classrooms... including hard candy...). We watched the beginning of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" to see the song "This is Halloween." I taught them part of the Thriller dance. I told them a scary story. I taught them some new Halloween words like "eerie" and "boo!". We played some of the most epic games of bingo I have ever played in my life. They seemed to really enjoy themselves and they took a lot of stalker photos of me while I taught.

I entertained them, acted like a fool, and we didn't have to talk about debate for once... I would say they enjoyed Halloween.

Now today is Halloween, the most blessed and happiest day of Amanda's year! I may not get to go to the annual epic Swartz's Halloween party but I have still managed to have a good Halloween season this year. Parties, scary movies with Adam, jack-o-lantern carving with students, and introducing customs like bobbing for apples and pumpkin carving make me so happy.

We spent all day putting up the decorations and turning our hallway into a little haunted house for our students that come trick or treating.

 

Halloween Night, All Hallow's Eve, is now here (huzzah!!) and we had our last Halloween celebration. At the Globechat village, we had a party with food, costumes, bobbing for apples, and a scary movie. After, Adam and I have bought bags and bags of candy for our students to come trick or treating in our apartment building... but before that, they have to get through our haunted hallway... MWUAHAHAH!!!!!!

QUITE the Halloween party!!

After a successful party for the students, it was time for TRICK OR TREATING!!

So, to my fellow Halloween lovers, I hope you have a spooky, wonderful, frightful Halloween night. For my fellow WriMos... NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow... 50,000 words in 30 days... Good luck... and I will see you on the other side.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Until Next Time,

Amanda

Halloween: Make It Work!

Forget Christmas--fall is the most wonderful time of the year, no matter what Andy Williams sings. I wish I could explain just how much I adore autumn and how it seems to reawaken my soul. The air is crisp and cold--you can almost taste it! The world that was blue and green start to catch fire and transforms into deep oranges and reds. Even in death, the world is gorgeous. Crunchy leaves, cold pumpkins, apple picking, candy, bonfires, costumes, hoodies, scary movies. Of course, living in China, it is really hard to get into the spirit of the season. Leaves are not changing, the temperature is not cold (it's going to be 88 degrees on Monday), and there is no sense of Halloween arriving in just two weeks.

I love my life right now--semi-nomadic, seeing the world, and experiencing life to the very fullest. But sometimes (like right about now), I cannot wait for someday when I am settled somewhere in America with a house to call my own, decorated for Halloween to the point where it resembles The Haunted Mansion. Who knows when someday will be here? So for now I have to make due with my own pathetic decorations on my door.

These were all just made out of index cards

Last year, I was still able to be in the Halloween spirit around this time. I got to go to a party with some of my best friends in China...even though they all abandoned me to return to the land of cheese and chocolate (read up on that story!). This year, there are several possibilities of parties though probably not to the same extreme as last year. So now I need to decide, what should I dress up as? I'm thinking either a Disneybound of Mickey Mouse (if I can find yellow shoes), a human version of a panda bear, or Wednesday Addams... Only time will tell!! Opinions? What say you?

Last year, I also got to introduce my students to the holiday and most of them barely knew anything about it. This year, I get to do the same thing but I will also host a small pre-Halloween party tomorrow night for our university's English Corner (basically just a chance for students to practice their English with native English speakers outside of the classroom). At first I wasn't sure what I wanted to do--I thought showing them a movie would be good ("Hocus Pocus") but I feel like that is not enough. So I am showing them "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" and we are also playing the mummy game (where you wrap someone up in toilet paper... admit it: you played that game when you were younger). And on top of that, we will be carving Jack-o-Lanterns. Yes. One of my favorite things to do around this time and yet something I have not done in two years.

Jack-o-Lanterns were originally used to ward of evil spirits during the festival of Samhain but today they are just so much flippin' fun! At our house, we always carve at least three or four Jack-o-Lanterns (though that doesn't come close to the 80 we carve at the Swartz's house!). Jed's are always the cute/funny ones but I always like to follow the Samhain tradition and I always make mine scary (sometimes including a knife sticking out of it and bright red nail polish blood).

Only problem? You can't find pumpkins in China, and if you do, they are super expensive. 

Solution: Use the $4 watermelon instead! In the words of the fabulous Tim Gunn, "Make it work!"

Yes, I figured if you can carve a gourd into a Jack-o-Lantern, you can also use a melon (some of the original Jack-o-Lanterns were carved out of turnips for crying out loud)! This was all a hypothesis and an unsteady one at that. My Halloween party is tomorrow and just today, I went out and brought home a melon to test my theories out.

TL;DR: It works and it looks awesome. If you want to carve a witch or a ninja turtle, watermelons are PERFECT! They are actually easier and less messy to carve than a pumpkin and when you light a candle inside, it glows a bright red which is just perfectly spooky! So, if you are interested, I kind of made up a little explanation/tutorial of how I carved my watermelon Jack-o-Lantern. Enjoy!

I tried to make The Pumpkin King... It kind of worked out!

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What you will need:

A ripe watermelon (not sure how easy this is to find in the states in October)

A knife

A spoon

A bowl (to put the melon guts in)

A pumpkin carving tool if you have one (sadly, I did not)

Man your battle stations!

 Step 1: Make the top of your Jack-o-Lantern

Unlike pumpkins, most watermelons do not have a flat bottom so find the flattest part and make that your bottom. Once you find your bottom, you also have your top! Now you need to carve the top (or the "hat" as I call it for my students). 

Your top needs to be bigger than when you cut one out for a pumpkin since you will need to get your hand in to hollow the melon out (That's right! Melons are not hollow like our beloved pumpkins!). I made my top about 1/4 of the watermelon. Remember that you need to cut straight across and not diagonally like a classic Jack-o-Lantern... Again, this is because it is not hollow and you won't be able to detach it otherwise. 

Step Two: Hollow out your Jack-o-Lantern

Unlike pumpkins, watermelons are not hollow so it is up to you to change that! You'd be surprised by how quick and easy this was--it probably took me about 15 minutes. The melon is really easy to dig into with a regular spoon and ladle out into a bowl. It can get sticky so you might want to lay down some of that good old fashioned newspaper. I forgot the reason why it is called a watermelon until I had to keep tipping it over and straining the water into a bowl (you will have to do this A LOT). 

Just like a pumpkin, make sure to not take out too much of the guts--you don't want to break through the skin. Watermelon is a lot softer than a pumpkin so you really have to be careful.

I would be careful with the size of watermelon you choose because once you hollow it out for your Jack-o-Lantern, you will have a bowlful of melon that needs to be eaten!

Oops! That's a lot of melon!

Step Three: Start carving your Jack-o-Lantern face!

Again, I always like to carve scary faces to keep with tradition but nowadays you can carve almost anything if you're talented enough (which I am not). Cute faces, actors, cartoon characters, landscapes, scenes... Anything your little heart desires!

I always like to sketch my idea out on paper first and then draw it on the pumpkin, or in this case, the melon.

 I tried to recreate the face of the Pumpkin King (aka: Jack Skellington) from "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Because watermelon is so much easier to carve than pumpkin, I actually managed to carve a halfway decent scary face and now I cannot wait to show my students tomorrow!

I'm kind of proud of this... one of my best carvings ever!!

Step Four: Light that sucker up!

Your Jack-o-Lantern always comes to life when you place that little flickering flame inside it. I always think of the Headless Horsemen each time I see those eerie eyes staring out at me through the darkness. 

The super cool thing about a watermelon when it is lit up by a candle, is that it glows bright red where a pumpkin glows orange. Both are spooky but I love the deep red of the melon--it's so different and almost looks dangerous!

Not too bad for my first try!

And there you have it! Now I'm not sure how long this will last before it starts to rot (though I don't have to worry about squirrels!) so I will have to let you know about that... I hope it just makes it to the party tomorrow night! 

I hope some of you try this out--it is really quick and easy and a fun twist on the tradition of the Jack-o-Lantern. If you do end up carving a melon Jack-o-Lantern, be sure to send me photos! 

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I'm hoping that my Halloween festivities go beyond the party tomorrow but, if not, I suppose that isn't too tragic. Adam and I have watched either a scary movie or an episode of "American Horror Story" every day since we've gotten back from Xi'an. I'm hoping to have at least one or two parties that I can go to during this sacred season... No matter what, I now have a spooky little Jack-o-Lantern to share the holiday with. 

Now all I need to find is some pumpkin seeds!

Happy Halloween!!

Until Next Time,

Amanda