Halloween: Finding the Bear Within...

Hi Everyone! We’ve got quite the exciting Halloween story to tell you all…

You might be asking yourself, “Does China celebrate Halloween?” Technically speaking no, China does not celebrate Halloween. BUT there are enough foreigners and expats to muster up a party or two. I was originally going to go as Wando, Where’s Waldo’s girlfriend (or possibly sister??) but I was out voted by my friends. I went instead dressed as a giant bear. And when I say giant I mean HUGE. In the markets here in China they sell HUGE stuffed toy bears. Naturally as we walked by them my friends all said “Hey, I bet Cassie could fit in one of those.” And that is how the idea was born. We bought the biggest stuffed bear we could find, decapitated it, and de-stuffed it. We safety pinned a top hat into the bear’s head which I wore as a hat and then I crawled into the bear body. We also added stuffing to the belly and bottom. It was pretty hilarious. My date, Thomas, went as the Unabomber. He wore a hooded sweatshirt, sunglasses, a fake mustache, and carried around a package with him all night. He always picks the most appropriate costumes, haha!

I was a pretty popular bear to say the least. By the end of the night my costume was covered in make-up and lipstick from people kissing my bear face and taking pictures with me all night long. We had heard that there was a bar in town hosting a costume contest with a pretty big prize so we decided to check it out. We all figured my costume had a pretty good chance of winning something. We arrived at this bar maybe 20 minutes before the contest began. Everyone was given yellow heart shaped stickers that they then used to vote for whatever costume they thought was the best. When it came time to tally up the votes I only had 11 heart stickers. A girl dressed as Salor Moon had about 19. It was pretty clear that technically speaking she had won the contest but then the crowd (meaning my friends and the fellow lovers of the bear) suddenly began to chant “BEAR! BEAR! BEAR! BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!” and they had no choice but to give the prize to me. I felt a little bad for Salor Moon but it was true that my costume was far superior and she was a good sport. The prize was a 1,000 yuan voucher for that bar/restaurant. That’s a lot of kuai! My other friend Iain won the male vote for best costume as well. He went as a marionette puppet. So our group walked away with 2,000 yuan for that place. It was pretty exciting.

This past Thursday we invited all of our friends who supported the bear and the puppet costumes to that same bar/restaurant and spent most of the vouchers we had on food and drinks for everyone. The restaurant serves Mexican food so we ordered Mexican pizzas and nachos all night long. I even got a band to come and play for us for free! The bear has a way with making connections and friends, what can I say?! It was a pretty awesome Halloween over all.

At school this past week Thomas and I both did Halloween lessons too. That is always fun for the kids. My parents sent me some American candy to give to my students and they LOVED it. I hope everyone else had a fun Halloween as well! Thomas and I are heading up to the family farm this weekend with Ariel and her parents. It should be a quiet and relaxing weekend. We will try to take a lot of pictures and add them soon. Some Halloween pictures will be coming soon as well! Love and miss you all!