Why can't halloween be once a month?

Before I get into the adventures Halloween let me debrief you on the rest of my weekend. 

Friday-belly dancing class :) it was great- hopefully i dont turn into a gypsy while living in Spain.

Saturday- double birthday party for one of the teachers at my school and her husband (and I got to join in too since my bday is also in October). Man oh man I ate SOOO much food...there was so much to try and I couldn't pass up trying new foods...I'm such a foodie!!! Soon to be a fatty if I keep this up lol. We all had so much fun and I got to meet a ton of new people, once more.

Sunday- HALLOWEEN...what you've all been waiting for...

I think I love Halloween even more now that I’m in Spain…even though about 99% of people don’t celebrate it. I’ve actually learned more about the history of Halloween in Spain and done more “Halloween” things here than I normally do in the states. For instance I’ve learned about the history of Halloween, trick-or-treating and jack-o-lanterns here. When I was in the U.S. all I knew was that you get candy if you’re a kid, if you’re older- you go to house parties and if you’re older than that you sit in the house and wait for trick-or-treaters ;) This year we (some of my new friends here and me) went to a Haunted House. The people who organized and set up the haunted house were a group of Spanish people, most of them working with one of the Americans in Lucena (who by the way is from PA), who went all out on Halloween. It was GREAT! These guys are so creative, especially since Halloween isn’t really even celebrated in Spain- everyone was so amazing.

And I got to be vampire, yay! (fyi I’m not a vampire fanatic- I’m just happy that I dressed up as something actually ‘halloweeny’ since I haven’t done that since I was like 7 yrs old). I loved doing the makeup for this vampire costume and got some great ideas from this website: http://www.fashionface.tv/

The girl who does her makeup on there is beyond talented and has some great ideas about makeup in general- if you have some time check it out. You can also find her on youtube. Now back to the Halloween party...

Let me give you a breakdown of what happened…

Each person was set up with a partner (this ended up changing into bigger groups but that didn’t really change anything).  One group would do the ‘scavenger hunt’ first and then after those people would stay in the house to help scare the next people. Then the next group would go in, etc. (there were 3 groups). We got to the house and were met by Igor (like the hunchback), who guided us through the night to the different rooms. When we got the porch/entrance, there was an “old” map outside on the table. There were no lights except a lantern that was all we had to use for our scavenger-like adventure.

How the adventure began was we had to communicate, through walkie-talkies, to a scary voice from inside the house. The whole idea of the night was that we had to enter in, go into a particular room, find a certain object, return back to the porch/entrance and wait to be prompted to go back in for the other object. The complication was that there were super scary creatures inside the house that would attack us if we got to close or disturbed them…we had to though because almost always the object was right around them (obviously done on purpose). The different characters inside the house included a crazy masked man with a chainsaw (which had an actual motor so it sounded like a real chainsaw), 2 exorcist type girls and usually (in most rooms) someone else hidden under a black sheet so we couldn’t see them very well, since the was VERY LITTLE light. All the people scaring us did a great job and stayed in character SO well I don’t even know how they did it. Igor also filmed this whole night- I can’t wait to see some of THAT video! lol

 

Basically, to summarize, there was a lot of screaming and running around the house. The whole thing took probably an hour or more…I’m not sure because I wasn’t really keeping track of time so I’m sure it was longer than an hour. These guys just went all out and it was so great. I wish there was more than one Halloween now!!! Why is it only one day?!?!?!

So after all the craziness we all hung out and ate some food and had some drinks. We also played some really funny game where you dance with a partner- the catch is that you have to have a piece of food in your mouth (usually you would use bananas but we didn’t have enough so we used bread slices) between you and your partner. So if that didn’t make sense let me try again: you have your mouth on one side of the bread (or banana) and your partner has their mouth on the other side. The idea is that with the bananas it looks really, well, awkward and inappropriate. The goal of the game is to not let your food drop out of either partner’s mouth…which is difficult when you also have to have your hands behind your back. The game was just hilarious…especially when you take photos lol. We also played musical chair but that’s definitely not as exciting as the other dancing game.

After all that excitement we went out to the bars, where NO ONE was dressed up and they all starred at us lol. By the end of the night I was just exhausted and was just very thankful that we had the next day off. This particular Monday (today) was a holiday so no one had to work- YAY! (There’s usually about 1 day a month that we have off to make a 3 day weekend- unless there is a long holiday- then we just have the long holiday) So this morning about half the people from last night went out and had churros and chocolate. FINALLY! This is such a Spanish thing to eat (not regularly but just every once in a while) and I JUST tried it today...after being in Spain for almost 2 months. I mean I've tried the chocolate, and I've tried the churros  but I haven't had a chance before this to try them together so, yea, it was a good start to the day. The rest of the day I just spent relaxing, watching TV and doing some cleaning. This weekend was just so full that I needed a day of rest!!!

This next week should be pretty mellow, but then again that’s what I always think and it never turns out that way… Well, make sure to take a look at the Halloween pics that I have posted and I may even have a video at some point (some of the guys are going to edit the footage from the night and make it into a little video)