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Jaci did manage to make it back from Rhode Island in time for Halloween- so we decided to celebrate in style. Three weeks ago we had gone to the pumpkin patch to pick up our perfect lanterns (a new Halloween tradition for Jaci, not so new for Ben). So the first order of business was to carve the lanterns. Winston is no stranger to carving lanterns, or dressed up strangers, as we had Halloween at Leckford Road both years in England, but country life has made him a little more farm ready for pumpkin patches. As you can see from the pictures- we went for classic style jack o’lanterns and they turned out very well!

Jaci was a little worried that we would have no kids show up at our house, since we are on the corner of a cul de sac- so she decorated the outside with a Halloween banner, some fake leaves, and 2 of the pumpkins. Obviously, one had to stay inside by our “hearth” to protect us from evil spirits- their main purpose on all hallows eve. (Note: we don’t actually have a hearth, but all this is metaphorical at best). To further prepare for trick or treaters we dressed up- Jaci as a fairy and me as sort of an old school vampire (teeth, cape- no diamond skin) but was wearing jeans. Winston started out as a dragon monster, but after some costume failures, he also became a fairy with his mother. (The failures were due to his teeth, but what can you do?)

For dinner, I made pumpkin, dahl, and roti. Amusingly, I was wearing a “Blood donor” apron while I was cooking, which went very well with the teeth and the cape. While cooking we enjoyed birthday martinis for Jaci, and during dinner- some of our new wine (thanks mom and dad!). We watched An American Warewolf in Paris as our pseudo-scary Halloween movie (which hopefully Jaci reviews- its now one of her favorite movies of all time– so bad its good!).

But we were quickly interrupted from our relaxing night by ghouls and ghosts in the night! There are hordes of kids in our neighborhood- in fact we quickly ran out of candy. Mostly this is my fault- at the beginning because we thought we would be skipped over, I may have been overly generous with the candy giving. Around 7 I had to make a frantic run to the grocery store to get more candy. Unfortunately in my panic, I grabbed six bags of candy- which was way too much, so in the end we had too many left overs anyway. While I was driving to the grocery store I was amazed by the number of kids in our neighborhood- seriously crowds like those in our neighborhood you can usually only find and sports stadiums!

Jaci was jet lagged- so unfortunately she passed out way early (although, pretty late for east coast time). I continued Halloween with Interview with a Vampire, then True Blood, and made it to All Hallows day! So here’s wishing you all a happy All Saints!

On Saturday night I went to a Halloween party that was widely publicized in Beijing. I wasn’t sure I would even be in the city for Halloween, so didn’t know very much about the party beforehand except that there was fierce debate and a lot of fence sitting among my group of friends about which Halloween party to attend (There was a super long message thread that lasted over the course of a week trying to come to a decision). We decided to go to this particular party and scrambled to buy tickets at the last minute. The theme of the party was “Fetish Party,” which didn’t really mean all that much except it gave some rather adventurous people the chance to come to a party in their underwear and get away with it (I guess that’s Halloween in general).

Apparently every single foreigner in Beijing between the ages of 16 and 35 were at that party, which meant that it was a mob scene. There was a huge crowd of people in front of the door when we finally showed up at one o’clock in the morning. The unfortunate crowd was outside because they did not have tickets, and the ones who did (us) had to push through them just to be harassed at the door by guards who pushed us back because they thought we did not have tickets as well.

I had to wave tickets in front of their face and yell at them that we had tickets before we were finally hustled inside. Inside was even crazier, thousands of young foreigners in varying degrees of insobriety and states of half-dress packed in a basement-like room dancing to blaring techno music.

Having been in China for a while, I have a higher threshold for absorbing sensory information than I would otherwise, but I could only last a couple hours before the throbbing, pulsing, spinning, glitter, fishnet stockings and neon wigs got to me. At least it was a memorable Halloween!