Halloween! (English)

Howdy!!!

Sorry for the delay to post, but I had some problems involving the cam. And I know you guys want pictures, right?

And again, I've been very busy around here ... ok, not so much, but it means I have enough articles to share with you!

But everything in its time, and I'll start talking how it was my first Halloween.

You know, we think we know what Halloween is by what we see in movies, series, or even in some schools and English courses do. But the thing is very different here in the land of Uncle Sam.

It's different just because, simply, here all is taken very seriously! ... Well ... not seriously, but people REALLY enjoy Halloween! I think the closest we have are June Feasts (which I love, say by the way). The difference here is that it's all in a day, on 31 October, while the festivities in Brazil the last months of June and July entirely.

I should have figured it was something bigger than I expected when I was at Walmart and had a 5 or so shelves with costumes, besides the entire corridor with giant packages of candies and chocolates, and scattered pumpkins to sell in the market. But until now, nothing very different from what we see in the market at Christmas and other holidays.

And, yeah of course, the decorated houses. There were not many, but closer to Halloween, more houses put Jack-o-Laterns in their doors. It was beautiful to see. In addition, throughout the city had Haunted Houses, warehouses which are rented at that time and become cursed houses, and so Aaron told me, are like the Castle of Horrors, but not necessarily with movie scenes. And I didn't go in any, because I'm so scared and did not want to risk going and end up without sleeping for a few nights.

Seriously, guys, think with me .. I am afraid of moths, imagine going to a place where the idea is make you get scared? Yeah. And Aaron said that many colleagues told him that many of these were verrrrry scary Haunted Houses. Nah... Next time.

Finally, the Saturday preceding Halloween (which fell sadly on  a Monday), I asked my beloved American to buy a pumpkin, because I would like to make a Jack-o-Lantern. He also bought a small kit with saws and other plastic tools for children, that came with some models of sculptures we could do. Not only had typical faces, but drawings of ghosts, bats, vampires and a ZOMBIE HAND! Of course, we chose the zombie, that much more awesome than little ghosts!

Well, as it was my first time, Aaron opened the pumpkin and let me do the honors of cleaning the poor thing.

So first, you stick your hand inside the pumpkin ....

... Grab as much seed as you can ....

... and pull them out. As you guys can see by my face, the process is pretty disgusting, because there is some stuff that slides when you try to pull out. Not to mention what gets stuck in your hand.

Yeah.

And the worst is that you have to clean as much as possible with a spatula and everything, because if you leave too much inside it, if you use a pumpkin candle, it could ignite and cause much trouble.

Once clean, it's time to put the template on the pumpkin and mark the outline of what you want to carve. That is a very delicate part, once the pumpkin is rounded and you have to be careful not to fold the paper over the drawing, or shake a lot to get model, because then you won't have any idea on where you should saw.

Then it's time to saw the lines marked on the pumpkin. And before someone points out that Aaron did all this alone, THAT'S NOT TRUE, OK? I did the straight lines .... And they were very straight!

Here just a detail showing the dots on the pumpkin.

AWESOME, ISN'T IT!

Well, we already had the pumpkin, candy for the kids ... were ready!

Almost.

I needed a costume. So we left in Monday to go after a few more sweets and a cool costume.
Once Halloween is not a holiday, everyone still have to work and study, only at night that happens distribution of sweets. But in many places some people go to work in fancy dress. Now that is a very nice! Aaron told me he had a year that some people in his work dressed as Village People. Walmart had the two women dressed as witches, with white face paint and black lipstick. It should be clear that most of the children were dressed, but had very adolescent and adults dressed too. Walking down the street I saw a guy dressed as a banana, and another dressed as hot dog. We went to dinner at Burger King, and passed a guy driving a pickup with a silver mask. Then we went to the mall, where there were families going to get candy stores, and many parents were dressed too. It's a really fun day.

Chosen my costume, we returned home to distribute sweets. We put a little of each candy in a bucket, and we waited for the children.

You guys ask me what my costume?

The Madwoman of the Treats, of course. We ended  buying only a witch's hat, but this witch's hat is the most blatant hat EVAH!

Okay, a prettier pic.

Anyway, a lot of people who came, and it is a very nice to give candy to the kids. We had to turn off the lights early, because the treats ended soon (each packet of sweets or chocolates had 200 candy, but Aaron repeated several times for me to give a lot of candy...).

That's all I have to tell you about Halloween. I promise that next year we will be properly dressed and ready!

Soon I write again to tell you about the camping!

Beijos!