Halloween tends to be one of my least favorite holidays. I figured one of the benefits of teaching English in Thailand for these few months was that I could skip all the hoopla of the holiday this time around. I was wrong. In fact, this was quite possibly my most active, engaged, and public Halloween to date.
Acknowledgement of the day began the night of October 30th. One of the American English teachers suggested all the English teachers dress up and put on a skit in front of the school on Halloween. I thought, “Ok, well, I’m not doing that.” It’s not because I’m a party pooper, I just thought it would be hard to achieve and awkward if successful...alright I’m kind of a party pooper. But, because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I became oddly involved in the developing of the skit and the planning of the costumes. At about 8:30pm the night before we’re supposed to “perform” two other girls and myself were shopping at Big C (like Walmart for Thailand) and found absolutely nothing in the way of face paint or costumes, which, of course, makes sense since Thailand doesn’t celebrate Halloween. As we were exiting the store with our heads hung low, all of a sudden a little boy comes strutting through the automatic doors in a full on Spiderman costume. We frantically asked him and his mom where they got the costume. Luckily the woman spoke a little English and was able to tell us this one bit of Halloween gold was from Tesco Lotus (the other Thai Walmart, maybe Thai Target). It was getting late and we were on our bicycles, so we decided not to explore that option. Instead we brainstormed and decided to print out masks from the internet, because, let’s face it, the internet solves most of the world’s problems.
The next morning I arrived to the school at 7:05am in order to print out a variety of scary masks. The rest of the teachers trickled in to print, color, cut, and finally tape the masks to our faces. The American English teacher in charge of the our Halloween festivities came prepared with themed tattoos, those were a big hit all day. An older English teacher from America came in with an entire devil/vampire/scary dude costume, face paint and all. Apparently his Thai wife and her family had some supplies stockpiled. Once we all got masked-up, we exited the teacher room walking like zombies down to the morning assembly. We waited for our cue and ran out into the crowd of 1st-6th graders growling and screaming “boo!” at them. They were confused, terrified, and above all else delighted. Then we hopped up on the stage for our Halloween skit. Two of the teachers held bags of candy and pretended to be home owners awaiting trick-or-treaters. Chelsea and I got to be the trick-or-treaters. This was awesome. Chelsea and I joked how we thought our days of trick-or-treating together were long over, and yet there we were mimicking the American tradition for 5,000+ Thai children. After Chelsea and I received our candy and the skit ended, one of the teachers threw the rest of the candy into the crowd of kids. I’ve never seen such utter chaos. The students, who normally sit with perfect posture in the straightest of rows, broke into sprints & threw elbows to get some of the coveted candy. Afterward we all agreed that was a bit dangerous, but also really entertaining.
The rest of the day I revolved my lesson plans around Halloween. I had my students play hangman to guess Halloween vocabulary like ghost, zombie (they super love zombies), vampire, witch, pumpkin, and Jack-o-lantern. Then I had them trick or treat to me at the front of the room. The would knock on a desk, I would make scary creaking door opening sounds, they would say “trick-or-treat, trick-or-treat, give me something good to eat,” I would ask them which of the vocabulary they were dressed as, they’d answer & sometimes act out zombie or vampire, and then I’d give them candy. They had fun with it and I loved that it was a super easy lesson. Also, Halloween lasted about three days for me because I had to be fair to all my classes and teach them each about the holiday, but I don’t see all my levels of classes on the same day, hence my three-day celebration.
Overall it was a great Halloween and my party pooper attitude was turned completely around by the end of the experience. This is a contender for my best Halloween yet and it definitely takes the bag of candy for most unique.
Oh, and Thai fun fact, everyone at the school and around town calls it “Halloween Day.” So I’d go to get my iced coffee in the afternoon and they’d wish me a “Happy Halloween Day!” It shall forever be known as that in my mind.
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