We started halloween out by going to Molgivadi, aka the J. Raj colony. Ironically most everyone, including the patients, was wearing orange. Of course the patients were just by chance, since Halloween means nothing in India.
People have heard of it simply from westernization, and I've noticed that there has been some scary masks for sale in some roadside shops over the last couple of weeks, but even then it has't been a ton and definitely not all over the place. Katie was trying to explain to Navimani the meaning of Halloween, its festivities, etc. Navimani was so cute as she was listening intently and then you saw the lightbulb come on (she probably remembered hearing it from past volunteers over the years) and she exlaimed "Oh yes! It's Candy Man Day!"
Errr.....that's close enough so we took it.
"Yes! It is Candy Man Day that is also called Halloween!" Needless to say there were a few "Happy Candy Man Day!" delivered to us throughout the rest of our time at the colony.
The rest of the day went as normal, with tutoring, playtime, projects worked on etc. Dr. Susan got back from the US last night so it was good to talk to and catch up with her this morning. I asked her if we could go see the kids in our costumes and give them some candy but we were denied. I guess in the past some genius volunteer dressed up with a mask for Halloween and scared the kids pretty bad-so we were not allowed to go show them our costumes, even though they weren't gory or scary. I was a little sad about that, but it worked out fine because we had permission to do whatever we wanted for Halloween in the Elephant House--and that we did. We all put costume ideas in a hat and each drew out an idea. Ironically, Ciera and Summer were the only ones who stuck with what they drew. I drew out a copy of something else someone had already drawn so we decided to change mine to keep things exciting. Berlyn and Katie didn't want to be what they drew so they did their own thing too-but it was fun to "draw" costumes out of a hat anyway. Summer is a Broadway superstar in America (No like for reals she is) so she shared her professional stage makeup know how with us-as you can tell by the pictures. Note to self, always try to celebrate Halloween with theater/artsy people. We definitely were spoiled.
The plan was dress up, watch a Halloween movie and eat candy; but we ended up skipping the movie part because we were having to much fun dressing up and taking pictures-like staging them and the whole nine yards. It was kind of ridiculous, and to any outsider looking in I'm sure they would of thought we were the biggest nerds but whatever. It was a memorable way to spend Halloween, although I have to be honest, I did really miss giving candy out to kids and seeing all the different costumes. The kids are my absolute favorite part about Halloween, so thank you to all the proud mamas that posted pics of their kids Halloween garb on Facebook. You unknowingly, helped make a snake charmers on the other side of the world day!
Katie insisted on being my snake for at least one of the pics
