The Great Pumpkin is Coming to Town

Halloween in China turned out to be a lot more fun than I had thought it would be. We were even able to find Halloween in some unexpected places- a Chinese university and a local mall.
The night before Halloween we got to help out at a party a lady in our branch was giving for her English students. This is their costume parade.

Much to Eric's displeasure I had agreed for the two of us to be in charge of the songs. Our assignment was to sing 'Halloween Carols' with the students. This meant we sang horribly worded renditions of Christmas carols. Every single song seemed to find some way to sneak mention of the 'Great Pumpkin' in there. Why, we could not figure out. But they sure gave the impression that Halloween is celebrated only to commemorate the 'Great Pumpkin', whoever that is... (all we could come up with was maybe this was a reference to the Great Pumpkin from the Charlie Brown comics?)

Halloween night we ventured out in very Halloween-ish weather to go to a mall called Aqua City. To our surprise we discovered elaborate Halloween decorations everywhere and little witches and supermans running around! (Apparently a community trick or treat was going on.)

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Some of the friends I made:


We also had our own Halloween celebration at home. For the first time in years I attempted caramel apples. Definitely put our chopsticks to good use!
Here is Eric carving our pumpkin.
Aren't they cute?!
We'd like you to meet Jack aka 'The Great Pumpkin.' (He does exist!)