With some success, I was able to order American candy and a small amount of chocolate through Amazon. One bag is delayed and will probably be delivered in time to be used in Christmas stockings or our daughter’s birthday, if at all. There are small pumpkins to order from grocery stores, and some families instead carved watermelons or squashes.
The first Halloween event we attended was hosted at the Embassy. We went office to office for candy. The kids were dinosaurs, and I dressed in khaki to be their wrangler. Despite the air conditioning, we were all dripping in sweat by the end of it!
The following evening, one of the popular American restaurants hosted a Halloween themed dinner. Our family participated by dressing up: I was Pooh, Miles was Eeyore, our daughter was Piglet, and our son was Tigger. Miles begrudgingly wore his donkey ears the whole dinner, making him the perfect Eeyore.
The next morning, we went to a neighbors’ Halloween party. She had hired a professional designer to decorate her backyard. On our walk over, a torrential downpour began and we ran through the spotty tree coverage to the house. Our daughter was Princess Anna from Frozen. While we waited for the rain to clear, we played games in the garage and indoor play room. We then ate lunch and went home for a nap before our own neighborhood’s trick or treating.
I was tasked with decorating our building’s entry way with another mom and former teacher. The theme was ‘pumpkin patch’, so we had the kids from our building decorate paper pumpkins for our front gate. I ordered wooden pumpkins and painted paper bags like jack o'lanterns for our entry stairs. I also painted a water color banner that read, ‘Welcome to our Patch’. I bought a Winnie The Pooh themed ‘Trick or Treat’ sign and a matching black and white gingham table cloth. We then proceeded to hand out candy for several hours in the heat.
I ambitiously, and naively, signed up to volunteer for the school’s Fall Festival. This is one of the school’s cornerstone PTA events. I am helping to decorate the Kindergarten Hallway with silly colorful monsters made of cardboard boxes and craft supplies. The school has an entire closet of art supplies purchased for the PTA to use, which I found astonishing after working in public schools in America. For the main decorations, the school hires a professional decorating team and commissions local artists. I have grossly underestimated how many hours of painting, and taping, and cutting on a floor I would be doing this month!
It is hard to believe that we are already in November, and are entering our fourth month of living here. In many ways it feels like we have always lived here and at the same time I think about home and what coming home will feel like. I think of the friends and the support here that we will lose, and of the connection and the comfort we will gain once we are back in Oregon.
