Halloween

So, for those of you actually keeping track, Halloween was like 4 months ago, but I've been lazy. Only our upcoming vacation to Morocco is motivating me to get back here. I need to get this done so that I don't have even more pages to do when we get back. :) But, I'm going to backdate this post, so it still shows up in the right spot. :)

So, Halloween was pretty fun. We discovered that more and more people in Germany are celebrating Halloween. We had what I considered to be a pretty big party, but we were the smallest of three, just in our little neighborhood. We invited several of our German neighbors to come to the party. We went to a big party shop in Wiesbaden to get some decorations and accessories for our costumes. It was an adventure. There were about a bajillion costumes. They weren't in nice little packages, they were hung up in aisle upon aisle. It was rather overwhelming. The Germans (in this area at least) like to dress up for Fasching, or Fastnacht, which is what they call Carnivale, so they have a lot of costumes.We saw some interesting things there, especially the wigs. Here, let me show you.

Nice, no?

Em found her costume from among the limited supply at the PX. It was called "Graveyard Fairy" It was pink and black and had stripes. She loves stripes. 

We had talked to our neighbors previously about whether kids trick-or-treated around here, and they said, "Yes, a bit." So, we bought some candy to hand out. Handing out candy to the German kids was fun! a lot of them had full on poems or songs to recite to get their candy. We didn't think there would be too many kids, so I was giving out a handful to each kid. I discovered that the German word for handful is handful, and they yelled it to their friends. As the night wore on, I realized there were going to be a lot more kids than expected, so I had to start giving out less. Our neighbors came by and took Em trick-or-treating with them around the block before they all came back to attend the party. 

It was on a Sunday night, so all of our American friends went home pretty early. I think they were all gone by 9 or 10. Our German neighbors, however, had the next day off, and they stayed until like 1am. We didn't have much alcohol, so they went to their houses and brought some over. For some reason, we got on the subject of Mexican food, and Max invited them all over the next weekend for tamales, which none of them had ever had.

It was fun.

 

Emma says- There wasn't as much Halloween here as in the house in MD, but I still really enjoyed it. I loved my costume. I don't remember how to say trick-or-treat in German.