Boo!

Did you all have a good Halloween? Here's a short description of ours...The boys begged to be something "scary" this year. After asking them what they had in mind (their definition may be different than mine), I realized that I can't keep them small and control the costumes forever... so I relented to a certain degree. Michael ended up being Indian Jones and Jake decided to capitalize on Mom's compromise and chose to be a vampire with "blood" running out of his mouth.

Being our first year here we weren't sure what to expect. There was going to be a parade at school, followed by parties - just like anywhere else.

Here is Julia and Snow White, aka Amanda, looking a bit grumpy because she couldn't participate in the parade.



Note the Teva sandals peeking out of Jake's costume...what else would a vampire wear on his feet but sandals when it's 90 degrees outside?



The parade was at school on Wednesday morning (our version of Friday). Then we waited for the actual Halloween day, of course. There was an email sent out - you will get a kick out of it! It read:

The 2008 Dhahran Community October Event will be held on Friday October 31st from 5-7pm for those who choose to participate, please keep your front house light illuminated to welcome visitors. Those houses with lights out are understood to not be participating in this activity.

Apparently the practice of not referring to Christian holidays by their name includes Halloween as well! On a side note, we also received information about a "seasonal visitor" who will be coming in December bringing gifts to the first 250 kids who sign up to come see him. Sheesh!

We ended up going outside our immediate neighborhood to an equally busy area on the other side of the school, where some friends were getting together to trick-or-treat and have pizza afterwards. We didn't have school the next day (I'm convinced they planned a professional development day on Nov. 1 on purpose!). It was lots of fun - crazy, wild, crowded fun. Many more cars than I was comfortable with were driving up and down the streets in the dark, which were already packed with sugared-up kids. I have never lived in such a popular trick-or-treat area. I'm assuming that the rest of the compound brought their kids into our area because more people were participating. We gave out only one piece per kid and ran out of candy within an hour. Without being able to describe how much we started with, I know that last statement is meaningless - the best I can do is tell you that our candy was in a five gallon bucket, and everyone mocked me initially for having way too much! Here is a picture of a particularly well decorated front yard (for here) , and an example of the crowds on the streets.



On a completely different note, Steve was able to take a couple pictures of the completely covered Saudi women, while he was taking pictures of costumes. That's a big, big no-no, so this will be my only chance to show you what they look like. Realize that it's very dark out, but you can see just their eyes showing.