Halloween Redefined (slightly)

Yes, I am finally writing again, post-move. How do I begin to catch you up on everything I've seen and felt in the last month and a half?!

I don't. I just start sharing stories.

So tonight I have to write about Halloween in the Philippines. I took my kids to a neighborhood where another expat family lives. They got us tickets. Yes, you have to buy tickets. My kids and I were as excited as we could be given that we were all melting in our costumes. But when we got there we didn't see much happening, and my daughter started to get anxious and disappointed. She expected that we would go, meet up with this family, and go together to ring doorbells. But here, the neighborhood puts on a "program". Everyone met up at the "clubhouse" and had pictures taken. Then we all started off as a big group for the "parade". Everyone went along a route together to the certain houses who had opted in for trick-or-treating.

My daughter wasn't having it. She just kept yelling "This isn't trick-or-treating! We shouldn't be going with all these people! I want to go alone!" I know, honey. So we hung to the back so we would feel like we were doing our own thing, but then several houses had run out of candy when we got there. Plus, the heat was forcing off costume accessories as we walked...Nothing I could do or say could make my daughter happy, which made me hurt so bad--especially because Halloween has always been a favorite of mine and we try to do a lot to make it special.

After trick-or-treating we went back to the clubhouse for the program, which involved a magician and a screening of Michael Jackson's Thriller", dubbed "The World's Greatest Music Video", followed by a "Thriller" dance contest. The star of the show here though was the food. My daughter walked in and saw ice cream, marshmallows, red popcorn, hot dogs on sticks with marshmallows (scroll down a bit on this blog post to see) and a chocolate fountain. Suddenly this was "the best Halloween ever"! Forget the distress of the first 80% of the night.

Afterwards I brought the kids home to our own neighborhood, where I put my son to bed and let my daughter go out again with kids here. I had to. The neighborhood was blaring the theme from "Ghostbusters" all night long and one house had purple strobe lights. A kid gets curious. The system here was the same, but this time she was ready for it: everyone gathered down at the communal basketball court (really just a concrete pad which doubles as a parking lot) and then went out all together to each house. She loved it.

I just think it's so interesting how circumstances can feel so bad, and then something very small can change our outlook completely and we end up with a memory of pure joy. I didn't like our first trick-or-treating experience here either, but I did feel good about our neighborhood tonight. As I was waiting for the kids to get up to me, I was outside watching and listening for them and I ended up talking with a guy who is doing work at the house next door (the workers apparently sleep out on this concrete pad at night while they're here because they are sort of migrant workers). It was a great conversation, especially given the language barrier, and I felt like Esther was making major inroads with kids in the neighborhood. It turned out to be a nice night after all.

Oh yeah--so I won't tell you all that I had to go through to get my daughter's costume put together. The wig was this big issue in and of itself. And my daughter spent the entire night without it because of the heat. This is definitely not a wig-friendly country (more on that later). So at the start of the evening I really wanted to throw some fits like my eight-year-old was. But suddenly everything changed. For me the turning point was standing outside my house and seeing a couple stars overhead, listening to this classic song from my past, and knowing that my daughter was having a great time. In our Filipino neighborhood.