I Got a Rock…

Lucky for me, I had Halloween off which made for a 4-day weekend. At school on Thursday, we basically spent the class periods doing Halloween activities. With the 5th graders, we watched Halloween videos I found: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, the song “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and an explanatory video about what Halloween is like in the U.S. The kids had never seen Charlie Brown, but they seemed to love the scene where Charlie keeps getting rocks. With the 1st graders, we did a Halloween word search, which was nearly impossible for them, and some coloring, which was considerably easier. Halloween isn’t as big of a holiday here as it is in the U.S. Kids probably do the most celebrating at school, and even then, it’s not as much as in America. Additionally, Halloween is meant to be strictly scary. Kids sometimes dress up (but don’t really trick or treat), and basically always as a witch, vampire, skeleton, ghost, etc. There’s another holiday called Carnival which occurs before Lent with more fun and less scary costumes.

Since Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, I was a little bummed that it’s not as big here. It’s also a holiday I spent a lot of time with my best friend back home. But my fellow auxiliares and I made up for this by carving pumpkins, drinking cider, and roasting pumpkin seeds one afternoon. Normally I would bake something pumpkin flavored, but opted for brownies considering it’s difficult to find pumpkin puree here (look for my next post chronicling my adventures in cooking…). I don’t think anyone minded having brownies instead, especially my roommate who got the leftovers.

Our finished jack o’ lanterns! Mine is the cute little ghost. The hole on top of my pumpkin was too small for the big candles my friend had, so I got creative and put my phone on top, haha.

I spent Halloween night out late (not by Spanish standards though) at a Halloween party one of my friends was having, and the food and drinks were great! If you haven’t seen already, I was Rosie the Riveter. With limited time to come up with a costume, I grabbed my chambray shirt, ran to a makeup store to buy some bright red lipstick, and successfully bought some fabric to make a headband. All in all, I think I did my mom (the queen of Halloween costumes) proud. I saw a lot of the same, scary costumes on my way to the party and wondered what everyone thought I was wearing. My roommate said I looked just like Rosie, and if anything, this costume gave me the chance to wear red lipstick, something I’m not usually seen wearing.

Rosie the Riveter. Basically impossible for Spaniards to pronounce, but at least some of them realized who I was.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend! Comment if you did or saw anything fun!