Halloween

Can you guess who Jesse and I are?
The Big House had their traditional party, and all big house inhabitants dressed thematically, pirates and gypsies.

Halloween Part II- The Festival

The festival begins at quarter past 5, with the kids all excited and dressed in their wonderful costumes. It contains a magic show for the kids, a parade, trick or treating in the classrooms and then games. This year, my 5th graders had a special presentation for the school, a Thriller dance, which they did twice- once for the students, once for the parents during the parade.

My teaching partner Tim and I.

The "Melrose Apartment Ladies", Chaya, Shauna and myself.
Jesse and I before the nighttime teacher party.

Halloween Part I- Decorations

Apparently, since our school is the American school, they have grasped onto some American ideas, one being Halloween. Last week, room mothers (yes, each classroom in the elementary have assigned room mothers to plan birthday parties and I'm not sure what else) started showing up to decorate the school for Halloween. Now, most people would assume that decorations might include a few streamers, some pumpkins, and some pictures of some kind. Well not these decorations. You could say, that Halloween has gotten a bit out of control. It almost appears to be a contest between the rooms to see who can decorate the most.

This is outside of my room.

In front of the office.

These decorations do little for the education of the kids and do a lot for exciting the students. It makes me a little bit sad to think about the amount of time and money spent on our school's decorations when there is so much poverty still around us.

They also decorated for the Halloween festival that happened after school on Friday. I didn't take pictures of the decorations there, but they were quite a sight.