During previous years the ESS has had some kind of Halloween event. Usually it involves makes something edible, but this year the students wanted to make a jack o’lantern. A couple days ago I found some real American-sized (and colored) pumpkins on sale. I bought one for 2000 yen, and today we hacked into it.
The students were super excited about it – they were dying to get their hands on it and begin the surgery. I had the pumpkin on my desk throughout the day, and teachers kept asking me about it. It was a good introduction to Halloween, which is only just catching on here. They aren’t trick or treating yet, but they like to buy Halloween candy and gifts.
We laid out some newspaper, and thanks to some tools that I brought along we were able to open the medium sized pumpkin up. Everybody got a chance to stick their hands in and pull some goop out, and everybody was saying “ewww” and the Japanese equivalent of “gross!”
I forgot my camera today, but I took some pictures with the school camera. Tomorrow I’ll download the images and try to get them posted here tomorrow night. There were some good pictures of girls mutilating pumpkins.
They also wanted to watch a movie, but we had one person that said “no scary movies!” I ended up renting “Haunted Mansion” as a compromise – I figured that it was made by Disney as a family movie so how scary could it be. We watched the first half, and one student screamed out loud a couple of times – she was easily frightened, I guess. Everyone else gave her a hard time.
At 5 o’clock we sent everyone home, and I left the jack o’lantern in my classroom – I’m sure it will reek of pumpkin tomorrow. The other teachers are eager to see it, so it might take a tour of the school tomorrow afternoon.
Tonight Kuniko is bringing home some shuu-mai from Ito Yokado, so we’ll be eating well. I started running again in the mornings, now that the weather is cooling off. I noticed that it has given me a big appetite.
