Happy Halloween!!

Well, so I know I’m skipping ahead, and that Election Day hasn’t even happened, but I wanted to go ahead and recount my Halloween tales while they were still somewhat pertinent. Thus, with no further ado, I humbly submit my Reflection Point 6, Part I: Scary Days: All Hallow’s Eve for your approval. Also, you must check out the photos from the various events!

Although I never thought it possible, I think I might be partied out. Amazing no? It’s just that it seems to me that partying is pretty much all that we’ve done this weekend. As a matter of fact we’ve managed to figure out a different party for each night. Friday night my apartment was invaded by knife-wielding maniacs ready to impale the flesh of innocent pumpkins. Saturday was the big Halloween Costume Fiesta complete with dancing, the limbo, musical chairs, and the well-loved all-important bobbing for apples. And finally, this evening, on the actual eve of the day of hallows, we decided to take it easy with a film fest.

For Friday evening we were planning a somewhat tame preparatory event for the following evening’s grand fête: pumpkin carving at my house. After searching the entire city for appropriate carving pumpkins to no avail, someone finally tipped us off to the fact that they had such jack-o-ready pumpkins at none other than Carrefour. I swear, sometimes there’s nothing you can’t find there. So, after a few arguments with a produce clerk about what constituted Halloween pumpkins (most pumpkins in China tend to be more gourd/squash-like in shape) and several trips to the back of the store we were able to get a total of seven respectable pumpkins for that evening thinking that maybe there would be around fifteen people so we could all share at two to a pumpkin…imagine my shock at the twenty-some-odd people who arrived at my door later that night (and that doesn’t count the neighbors and fuwuyuan [service attendants] who came to supervise and to offer us smokes!). Let’s just say that I was somewhat underprepared for that large a number of people in my smallish apartment. After several chair runs, stealing a desk from a nearby classroom, a beer run, and a chocolate run we had things under control. I was on team Jeff/Japan (JJ for short) with two Japanese acquaintances (check out the photo of team JJ at my online photo album), and we ended up taking third in the pumpkin carving competition. All in all I think we managed to pull off a fun evening. Even the French were smiling in the end (it helped that I made them stick their hands in pumpkin guts).

Saturday evening was the dance party to which we invited many many people. We were able to convince the fuwuyuan to let us use the cafeteria in our compound for the party, which was a good thing since otherwise it would have been in Joelle and Salvador’s apartment, and I don’t think it could have quite held everybody. Anyway, the planners, who were obviously all American, were expecting an American-style party with dancing and drinking and whatnot. What we had forgotten was that we were in China. We finally realized that just dancing wasn’t really going to work when one of the Chinese guests asked another American guest “So, how many performances will there be tonight?” Now, performances, particularly singing and dancing, are fairly typical events at Chinese parties, but we had managed to forget to plan anything like that. Instead we decided that organized games were in order. We started with a rousing rendition of musical chairs, moved on to the limbo (which the Chinese are surprisingly good at I might add, I think it helps that they’re kind of short to begin with), tried to dance a little with the YMCA and Aseraje (aka the Las Ketchup song), had a costume competition (I didn’t win but, as Michael Jackson, I was a finalist for the best overall costume), and rounded it out with bobbing for apples (I went 1 and 1). Again, I think we were able to pull it off fairly well, we just weren’t expecting to have to do quite as much handholding as we ended up doing. So much for being on auto pilot when hosting parties like I normally am in the US! I ended up being the deejay and emcee at various points during the evening. Again, go see pictures!

After clean up we headed over to the grand reopening/Halloween party at a bar nearby called the Speakeasy. I think our group had the best costumes, but there were some other interesting ones there too. I actually spent most of my time there chatting with some French girls that I had met earlier that night at our party. It was really good to practice my French, but I just keep thinking: aack, my French is getting worse by the day! In any case, it ended up being a strange mix of people there, so we left within fairly short order (only stayed until 3:30AM or something like that, but we didn’t get there ‘til like 1AM).

Finally, today we gathered in another friend’s apartment for scary movies. I also watched one myself earlier today called Jiaozi, which is Chinese for Dumplings. I was generally aware that the plot had something to do with a woman who killed people and put them into dumplings, but I wasn’t quite expecting a Chinese abortion doctor who served the aborted fetuses to people in order to make them look younger and more attractive. Needless to say it was more disturbing than scary. This evening, however, we watched the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest, which was quite intriguing and vaguely suspenseful, although again, not very scary. I had never seen it and really just enjoyed the dialogue. There were some scenes that were incredibly racy and all they were doing was talking! Of course then they got on to the entire face smush kiss, and that was a total turn off.

So, all in all, I had a good Halloween weekend, and am looking forward to the next scary day on Tuesday. I’ve already faxed in my ballot, and want to take this time to remind you yet again to VOTE ON TUESDAY!!! YOU GUYS HAVE IT EASY ACTUALLY BEING IN THE COUNTRY, SO VOTE! We’ll be over here watching episodes of the West Wing and drinking beer on Wednesday morning waiting for the final tally (cause we didn’t party enough this weekend…).

Anyway, let me leave you with some Halloween Fun Facts (which may or may not be actually related to Halloween):

2- The number of cases of beer that we bought for Saturday that did not get drunk at the party.
1- The number of people at the Saturday night party who called me a lush for having about three Dixie cups of beer.
5 yuan- The average amount for our Chinese crazy pumpkins (about equal to $0.65)
4- The number of complete seasons of the West Wing that I have watched in the last two weeks.
5.5-6- The number of months old for the most nutritious aborted fetus according to the movie Dumplings. Also, babies resulting from incest are also apparently more potent but cause a fishy smell. Like I said, the movie was quite disturbing.