Halloween(s)

I had two distinct experiences as a part of Halloween celebrations this year: one at work, and one out on the town, each with different level of fun.

A tired Mrs. Wei and a restless Allie

The first was the Halloween party that my preschool put on for the children and for the parents. In my mind this started as early as Thursday evening, when I helped Mrs. Wei carve a pumpkin (read: carved it for her). Mrs. Wei is one of the teachers at my preschool, a motherly figure with her own 5 year old daughter, Allie. Allie likes me a lot, and Mrs. Wei is very nice to me, so I guess I am kind of a friend of the family. I have told Mrs. Wei that if she ever needs someone to watch over Allie she can just give me a call. Mrs. Wei had asked me to help her carve a pumpkin, and I was excited to have an opportunity to attempt the cannibal pumpkin concept. Thursday we stayed at the preschool after the kids had left and got a table all covered with plastic, got some knives for the carving itself, and went to it. I used a marker to draw on our goal, and I got to it. Mostly I cut things out, but I recruited Mrs. Wei's help for some of the parts that I had clearly marked, so after explaining to her how it should be cut I got to take some small breaks to chit chat with the other three or four people that had also stayed after. I even got Allie to help me out (a little bit) in taking out the 'guts' of the pumpkin. In the end, although we didn't have access to as big of a pumpkin as I would have liked, I am quite pleased with how it turned out. One of the Chinese teachers took some pictures with her cell phone, but I haven't gotten a hold of those yet. I will certainly put them up here when I am able to, but for now, you will have to be satisfied to know that my creation was based off of, and ended up looking like, this. [EDIT: Pictures added. Not enough to show the final creation, though. :( ]

Except for the teeth the pumpkin is finished being carved.

On Friday, although I went to work, we did not teach class. The whole morning was spent between playing with the kids, preparing for the afternoon's party, and carving a pumpkin. I had the kids help me pull the guts out, which some of them liked and some of them didn't. They gripped the little seeds very gingerly and reached into the pumpkin to grab more very tentatively. It was cute to watch them do something so completely new and completely foreign to them. After lunchtime, however, things really started to get going. We re-arranged the cafeteria room, my friend Lao Zhou (a juggler) arrived, and the parent's started to show up. I was the MJ of the event, so once everyone was there, I got on stage to give everyone a quick welcome and to introduce the activities and entertainments of the afternoon (we got a magician too). It was actually pretty hectic, between some of the Chinese staff trying to have 2- and 3-year-olds play musical chairs, the pumpkin pie competition (I was one of the taste judges, and I had to spit one out), and intense disagreements between the bosses (as there always is here). As it wrapped up though, I was helping the other staff prepare for the evening's party. The afternoon party was just for the little kids (ages 2-4) and their families, while we had a separate party in the evening for the bigger kids (ages 5-7). The best part, by far, of the evening party was the haunted house. We all put a lot of work into moving things around and setting everything up in order to turn the cafeteria and two adjacent classrooms into a scary place for the families and for the children. Although the jack-o-lantern carving contest and bobbing for apples definitely had their fun moments, the haunted house was, hands down, the best part of the evening. After the parents and kids left some of the people at work planned to have some kind of an after party, but I preferred to go home and rest. I really had to work to get out of there, since my bosses wanted me to stay for the after party, but I made it clear that I would rather go home, so home I went.

Saturday (pre-5pm) was possibly one of the least productive days of my time here, ever. I blame this partially on Federico, since he recommended the game Spore to me, and then I went to a local electronics market and got it for 50元 (about $7 U.S.). I played Spore for pretty much the whole day on Saturday. I am amazed at how I looked up at the clock and HOURS had passed. Thankfully, I have a dinner date with a friend that evening, otherwise I might have kept playing until midnight (as I did on the next night, Sunday). I left home a little after five o’clock in order to meet my friend Fan Rong near NanLuoGuXiang. She had read a good review of a pizza place online, and she wanted to check it out. I was disgusted by the concept of YangRouChuaner Pizza and Kung Pao Chicken Pizza (which are apparently the famous house specialties), but we got a half-Italian half-African (banana and mango) pizza, which was satisfying enough. After dinner we took a short walk to the Peng Hao Theater (one of my favorite theaters in Beijing) for Beijing Improv’s special Halloween improv show. Beijing Improv is always a blast, but this one was a little different, since it was a special Halloween show. They started out by making up (read: improvising) a scary story. It ended up involving the demise of a little town called Spoon River, where the main industry was a spoon factory (what else?). Through a combination of the village drunk starting a fork craze and the trend of mudslides in the town everyone ended up dying horrible deaths. After that short into piece, the group launched into more classic improv games, most of which made for wonderful entertainment. After nearly two hours of laughing, giving the performers suggestions, and enjoying myself thoroughly the show was over. Fan Rong had to meet someone in Sanlitun, but we had some time before that so we were joined by Duoyi (a friend from improv workshops) and we all strolled over to 46 Fangjia Hutong (and here), where we stopped at the Hot Cat Club. I was pleasantly surprised to find a local ska band ripping it up, and I enjoyed their music immensely. After whiling away some time with Jenga we hopped in a cab to go to the Sanlitun and meet up with improv people. I ended up dancing at Tun with some of the improv performers of the evening and their friends. I hadn’t been dancing in soooo long. I loved it. I have always been an early sleeper though, so I went home a little after 2 in the morning. Unexpectedly, I got a phone call from Fan Rong around 5, at which point she told me that the friend she had expected to spend the night with had bailed on her and she needed a place to stay. She knew that I had an air mattress, and I told her that it was fine if she wanted to crash there. I let her in, and then crashed again. Due to my sleeping habits, I was naturally awake at around 9 the next morning… and I have been tired ever since. I met another friend for lunch, and we talked about all kind of things, from the rising importance of China in the world to all the dirty work that the CIA has done throughout Latin America. It was really nice to have such a good talk. I spent the rest of the day relaxing at home, not even going out to see David Cooper’s band, The Red Pirates, that evening.

All in all, it was a SUPER enjoyable weekend. The video game, the improv show, going out dancing, and spending time with old friends made for a great couple of days. It makes me wish that I didn’t have work Mon-Fri.