Halloween Shanghai style

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Well I can safely say I have never seen Halloween like I have seen it todya, it was totally amazing! As some of you know, I have been practicing a teacher's performance of a dance to Thriller, and this is involved trying to sort a costume of a zombie come witch outfit for today! So, after much shirt ripping and hair back-combing, I was up at 5.30am this morning to dres myself and Sophie, and off we went to school on a rainy (yet mild) October morning in Shanghai. We took a bike thing as the make up I had on and the state of my hair might have dawn too much attention! As we arrived at school I had that horrible feeling that I had got the wrong day and had to ring my friend Victoria and check. Sophie and I went to my classroom for one last dance practice and to finalise our costumes, then went downstairs to join the rest of the school in fancy dress mode.

Now, Ian was asking me why I was so worried "it's just a fancy dress day at school", but wow, he was so wrong. Our first lesson was cancelled and we had a class costume contest, where one of my students who was dressed as SpongeBob Squarepants won! I then had to try and teach normally for 2 periods until break where they went off for 2 other lessons and I went to help out decorating the gym for the afternoon celebrations. At 12pm, we all went back to our classrooms where we had several mums there and all students had brought huge amounts of food for our class party. Sushi, chicken wings, tea eggs, cookies, fruit, sandwiches and candy galore.....it was brilliant.

At 1pm, we all went into the gym and there was the costume contest with 2 winners from each grade (Spongebob won needless to say, see pics!), then all the teachers had to parade for the judges and the winners were Ms Sarah (Sophie's teacher) as a gothic princess, and Ms Karen who was a retro 80s cool chick, along with zombie Ms Maddi and Mr Benjamin who was just funny! After this, we were expecting a class parade but this didn't happen and the programme was rapidly brought forward. Suddenly the Thriller tune was starting and me and Tina had to make a dash for the stage just about in time for the start of the performance. It was brilliant fun and everybody (including the 500 students, 70 staff and about 100 parents) seemed to enjoy us making a fool of ourselves! The celebration finished early and we were able to go and clear up our classrooms before sending our witches, grim reapers and so forth back into society!

After school, even though we were all totally shattered, we went to our Principal's house for a staff party. It was very amusing and we all let our hair down somewhat, with a bit of an 80's revival, reperformance of Thriller (twice and video'd might I add!), and some silly certificate presentations! After a few sheberts I decided to come home and rejoin the family, as Ian and the children had joined the compound Trick or Treating gang and I met them half way round. I was quickly sent home however, as I was informed that our flat was the next one to be "hit"....wow, that was the truth, the kids zoomed in and took handfuls of sweets and ran off to the next flat! William decided to stay home and go to bed (it being 8.30pm) and Sophie and Ian came back at bout 9pm. We are desperately hoping for a lie in tomorrow.

William took his Batman costume to school and had a day of parties at Kindergarten, with Trick or Treating around the classrooms and pumpkin mask making. We weren't invited in, but Ian has the pleasure of going in for open morning on Monday so is looking forward to seeing the photos then.

Enjoy the pics!

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