This is Halloween!

Woohoo! Its that time of year again! I love Halloween, and this year I got to help make a Haunted House!

 

The Chinese teachers here asked us (well, demanded is more like it) to make a Haunted House for the Halloween party that was being thrown for all the International schools in the area. We were really excited, but of course we were a little overwhelmed. Haunted Houses are a lot of work, ya know? So we designed a layout of sorts, and decided what we wanted in the house and got to work! It took FOREVER to make but we got it all done!

 

I'll walk you through the Haunted House. You enter through some black cloth and come upon a creepy zombie rocking in a chair (that would be Chelsey) who then follows you. All of the sudden a ghost pops up out of nowhere, and frightens you. Then the zombie pushes you into a room and locks you in. There you find an insane clown, draped in chains. There is banging on the doors and walls, and the clown is clanking the chains and staring you down. The door then opens and the clown and zombie push you into another room. On the wall there is a sign saying "crazy doctor" (China's version of a mad scientist) and there are bowls with eyeballs and a brain. There are jars filled with ominous colored liquids, jars filled with floating animals, and jars containing animals with too many legs. On a different table you find half a head and a knife, covered in blood. The Doctor has been working.... You find yourself caught up in looking at all these disturbing scenes, peering into the bowls and touching the brain. And, before you can register what is happening, a skeleton (me) pops out from behind the open door, and you go screaming back into the hall with the clown and zombie close at your tail. You now find yourself in a dark hallway, and you can barely see. The monsters behind you are pushing you onward, but the steps you take are small from the fear of the unknown that lies ahead. You scuffle into another room where 3 coffins lay. On the wall hangs a sign and a mirror.. the sign tells of the 3 dead who lay here, and to turn around 3 times and look into the mirror, where you'll see one of their ghosts. Being a curious person, you follow the directions, and after you come to a stop from your spinning, nothing happens. You look around in disappointment and hear a scream. You then realize the scream is coming from your own mouth, because one of the dead bodies (Teresa) is now sitting up, and moving towards you. You run out of the room and down a new hallway. You make a turn and see before you a slight glow. As you move closer and closer you find a room filled with glowing sticks. This is a most interesting room, you are thinking. All of the sudden some of the lights are moving towards you. You are confused, and scared, because glowing sticks shouldn't be able to move. You then understand that it is a monster (Lindsay) jumping out towards you. After some more screaming and running down dark hallways, you see the exit ahead. You bolt for the door, and as you cross the threshold a giant spider drops onto your head from nowhere. You brush it aside, yelling as you go.

 

Our Haunted House was a pretty good hit. We made several kids cry and leap into their parents arms. It was pretty fun haha. We also had a performance at the party. All of our kids sang songs for their parents. They sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider, One Two Buckle my Shoe, and the Witch Song. After that we had the wonderful experience of performing Thriller again. This time was more fun because we used the whole song, not just a segment from it. We started out going through the crowd and scaring them, and when the chorus would come on we would brake out into the dance steps. For the last two minutes of the song we went up on the stage and performed the whole routine. It was really cool because we were all dressed up and had our creepy face paint. The face paint was lots of fun to have, except a lot of the children were too afraid to come up to us and say hello, which was sad. A few of them would warm up to us as soon as they heard our voices and realized it was us. One of my favorite students, a 4 year old named Yumi, saw me and wasn't afraid at all! She just yelled "Teacher!!" and came running over to me to show me her costume and give me a hug. It was super cute.

 

The party was a lot of fun! After it was over we had to walk home, and it was the funnest walk I have ever been on. If you ever want a good laugh, paint your face really creepy, and then go walking on the streets of an unsuspecting China. You'll love it haha. The Chinese don't celebrate Halloween, and so as we were walking home we got a lot of funny stares. We decided that we should try to scare people while we were at it, so when we would pass shops we would just stand there looking through the window at people until they would look up and when they finally did, they would jump sky high. Sometimes they would cower into a friend of theirs and wouldn't look up again for a few minutes, hoping we would be gone when they finally sat up. These were the most fun because we would move even closer to that person and wait, and when they finally looked up again we would scare them even more than before. Haha it was way too much fun. And when we were walking, people would avoid us as much as possible, walking on the road to stay as far away as possible. When we got to a really crowded area where all of the shopping places are, we were able to scare a lot of people. But after a little bit they all started whipping out their cell phones and began to take pictures of us and with us. This turned into a 15 minute photo shoot, and we ended up being "escorted of the premises" by the guards. It was so funny.

 

Halloween is

SO

MUCH

FUN!

 

(Pictures: #1: All of the teachers and our foreign coordinator Annie inside the Haunted house. #2: Me and Yumi, one of my favorite students. #3: Part of the Mad Scientist's room. Note- All of the things in the jars are REAL. We found them in a box in a creepy deserted room. #4: Becca and I in our face paint.)